Slow Cookers

[easysurfer]

My first meal in the new slow cooker is cooking away.

The 7 quart size isn't really too big as long as I put in plenty of vegetables. In the pot, I've got 3 potatos, 2 1/2 onions, a few baby carrots, a few celery stalks, and two corn cobs with the 5.5 lb chicken. Everything fits nicely.

 

[NW-Bound]

... I really like the bag. It's a nice fit if I ever travel with the cooker...

Eh, how are you going to travel with a crock pot?

You are not checking it in at an airline counter, nor cooking in a motel room on road trips, right? An RV in your future?

 

[audreyh1]

Eh, how are you going to travel with a crock pot?

You are not checking it in at an airline counter, nor cooking in a motel room on road trips, right? An RV in your future?

You might shocked to learn this, NW-Bound, but some people take their crockpots to parties!

 

[tmm99]

We have a couple of crock pots, and for some reasons my wife has not been using them recently.

Her new [-]toy[/-] kitchen tool is a "thermal cooker". I wonder how many here have this. A thermal cooker is basically a big thermos bottle. It has an inner pot that you bring its content to a boil on a stove, then put that pot inside a larger double-walled container with vacuum to keep it hot and to simmer.

A thermal cooker does not have a heating element. Therefore my wife uses it mainly to simmer soup bones, either chicken or beef bones, to make soup for me (I've got to have soup stock from real bones, no bouillon cubes for me). She got a big 2-gallon model, and it does that very well. Because there is no heating element, it can be left unattended, and cannot burn food at the bottom.

Right now, she has a batch of bolognese sauce simmering in it.

This thermal cooker thingy looks perfect for camping, or in disaster situations where kitchen fuel is limited. Or if you want to cook stews in the summer time in an RV.

 

[NW-Bound]

I am sure my wife will take it along for our next RV trip. It's expensive compared to the normal crock pot, but my wife needs or deserves some indulgence sometimes.

It will take a lot of bone simmering for the electric savings to add up to its cost. The real advantage of this is that the entire home does not smell like soup, because there's no steam evaporating from it.

 

[tmm99]

I am sure my wife will take it along for our next RV trip. It's expensive compared to the normal crock pot, but my wife needs or deserves some indulgence sometimes.

It will take a lot of bone simmering for the electric savings to add up to its cost. The real advantage of this is that the entire home does not smell like soup, because there's no steam evaporating from it.

How warm/hot is the content of the thermal cooker, say, after 6 hours?

This cooker looks interesting. It says you can put all the ingredients like veggies at the beginning and they keep their textures/shapes, unlike slow cookers. If you cook meat stews, I imagine the meat needs to be cut fairly small? I guess the trick is to cook everything through before adding it to the outer cooker so there is no bacterial growth while being warmed/cooked for the next few hours...

 

[donheff]

Crock pots, thermal cookers. Anyone doing sous vide?

 

[NW-Bound]

How warm/hot is the content of the thermal cooker, say, after 6 hours?

This cooker looks interesting. It says you can put all the ingredients like veggies at the beginning and they keep their textures/shapes, unlike slow cookers. If you cook meat stews, I imagine the meat needs to be cut fairly small? I guess the trick is to cook everything through before adding it to the outer cooker so there is no bacterial growth while being warmed/cooked for the next few hours...

If you bring the content to a boil, meaning 212F, it should still be above 170F overnight.

Because it cooks at a lower temperature, things tend not to be mushy. On the other hand, if it is undercooked, one can lift out the inner pot to heat it back up again, then let it simmer for a little more.

Cooking with this can be tricky, and I would think that a high proportion of liquid, which is brought to a boil, relative to solids, which still stay cool in the inside, is needed for this to work. As the heat is transferred from the water into the solids, the temperature of the pot would drop.

Also a large thermal mass is needed, meaning with a large pot like we have, making just a quart or two of a dish is probably doomed to failure.

As I mentioned, my wife has been using this mostly to steep soup bones to make broth, and this is pretty much fool-proof. It is the same with thin soup. She has not done much else with it.

 

[freebird5825]

I use my crockpot for EVERYTHING involving meat. I do not usually add veggies unless it is a soup or stew, or I will be there to baste them. They tend to dry out.

Mine is an oval shaped cooker with a removable crock, 10.5" in length and 7.5" in width measured on the inside of the ceramic cooker. Brand is West Bend, The Crockery Cooker.
Newer versions are shown here
http://westbend.com/cooking/slow-cookers.html
It has a clear glass lid. I've owned it for at least 2 decades, with never a problem.

I use olive oil drizzled over meats that have been frozen. I love the taste of olive oil and want to get more into my diet. It really soaks into the food as it cooks. Spices are varied. I love to throw whole cloves of garlic in (peeled but unmashed) with meats of all types and eat the cloves by themselves later. wooooo

Mr B makes a killer Yankee pot roast. He is telling me how to make it while I type up the recipe here.

Yankee Pot Roast
Peel and slice 2 potatoes into 1.5" chunks. Peel carrots and cut into 2" lengths. Layer potatoes and carrots on bottom of crockpot. Cover with a boneless well marbled chuck roast. Add approx 1/4 cup water. Season with salt and pepper.
Cook on low for 6 hours.

 

[haha]

A thermal cooker does not have a heating element. Therefore my wife uses it mainly to simmer soup bones, either chicken or beef bones, to make soup for me (I've got to have soup stock from real bones, no bouillon cubes for me).

Explain to us other married or formerly married men how you get her to indulge you like this?

Ha

 

[Moemg]

Explain to us other married or formerly married men how you get her to indulge you like this?

Ha

Ha, You know the answer . The nicer you are to your wife or lover the more likely she is willing to spoil you .

 

[haha]

Ha, You know the answer . The nicer you are to your wife or lover the more likely she is willing to spoil you .

True, but so mundane!

 

[Dreamer]

3 of my favorite recipes:


2) Boneless chicken with 1 package of taco seasoning mix and a cup of salsa. Just before serving, remove chicken and shred it, add 1/4 FF sour cream to the sauce and serve over rice. The chicken is also good cold, so I use it for tacos the next day

Nui

Nui,

I made this for dinner tonight. We put it on whole grain tortillas and added a little more salsa, sour cream and DH put cheese on his. DH told me 4 times how good it was, so it was a hit. Thanks for the recipe. I should have followed your recipe regarding using boneless chicken. I had 4 chicken breasts that had bones and threw them in the crockpot. I normally use boneless chicken breast and had no idea who many small bones were in there and kept finding small bones. I will always use the boneless chicken in the crockpot in the future.

 

[NW-Bound]

Yes, it is as simple as that: give and take. Of course, my wife keeps complaining that I take more than I give.

By the way, I am not at all a finicky eater. However, I am trying to lose weight by eating a simple soup and salad for lunch, so I might as well have a nice soup made with real broth to make up for what else I could be eating.

Ha, You know the answer . The nicer you are to your wife or lover the more likely she is willing to spoil you .

True, but so mundane!

 

[freebird5825]

Ha, You know the answer . The nicer you are to your wife or lover the more likely she is willing to spoil you .

Explain to us other married or formerly married men how you get her to indulge you like this?
Ha

I spoil Mr B all the time. He is not used to that from his previous life.

My reward? Seeing him smile and thank me ALL THE TIME for the TLC and attention.

It ain't rocket science.

I cook as healthy as I can for Mr B. He loves to eat junk food and fried foods. I am simply restoring the balance in his diet.

 

[TromboneAl]

This may be a surprise to some, but cookbooks are obsolete. Yes, this news brought to you from the guy who compiled the ER forum cookbook.

They are fun to browse through, maybe, but the Internet is the only way to fly here. Google for some ideas, check out the ratings of the recipe, and copy it to your mobile device (googledocs work well here).

 

[chris2008]

No, no, no. Cookbooks are not obsolete. I love all my mobile toys but I will never give up my paper cookbooks.