To ask about your views on slow cookers and recipes

[oldishladyinashoebox]

Okay I'm sure this has been done a lot but I just wanted to ask

.what do you think of slow cookers ?
. Do have any favourite recipes to share?

I like my slow cooker but I don't love it. To me, meals cooked in the oven do taste nicer but it's a nice( and smug ) feeling to throw something in the SC at the start of the day and come home to a nice hot meal without having to get an awful takeaway.
Recipes that work for us so far are.

1. Vietnamese chicken curry
2. Butternut squash risotto

3.a whole chicken ( not as nice as oven roasted but still nice)

1. Mumsnet cowgirl stew
2. Homemade baked beans

A Korean style beef stew 5 ratatouille

1. Baked potatoes
2. Soup stock

The biggest total flop was mac and cheese . That was awful, resembled 🐱 sick 🤢.

It's also nice to not turn the oven on when it's really hot outside

Thanks everyone

This slow cooker butter chicken curry is easy to make and absolutely delicious, I've made it twice and it never fails (add chillis if you like it spicy).
*Slow cooker butter chicken
Ingredients 
Serves: 6 *
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 4 large skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons curry powder
• 1 tablespoon curry paste
• 2 teaspoons tandoori masala
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 175g tomato puree
• 15 green cardamom pods
• 1 (400ml) tin coconut milk
• 200g natural yoghurt
• Red chilli
• salt to taste

Prep:30min › Cook:6hr › Ready in:6hr30min
1. Heat the butter and vegetable oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Stir in the chicken, onion and garlic. Cook and stir until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 10 minutes. Stir in the curry powder, curry paste, tandoori masala, garam masala and tomato puree until no lumps of tomato puree remain. Pour into a slow cooker, and stir in the cardamom pods, coconut milk and yoghurt. Season to taste with salt.
2. Cook on High 4 to 6 hours, or on Low 6 to 8 hours until the chicken is tender and the sauce has reduced to your desired consistency. Remove and discard the cardamom pods before serving.

I do have a slow cooker cookbook. It's from about 4 years ago but it's a bit rubbish and has quite a few bad reviews on amazon. The cream cheese brownies and cinnamon rolls were spectacular disasters. 🤢

We had Pork and Pineapple Curry last night and it was delicious - my absolute fave.

I do use my SC - I bought it when we had our kitchen ripped out, fully intending to pass it onto someone else - but I've kept it. It does have a place in my cooking repertoire... but only maybe once a week. I also use it to batch cook mince etc.

Somewhere I have a recipe for making a huge amount of curry sauce in a SC. It requires an hour chopping lots of veg, then a few hours in the SC.

After that, you have enough curry sauce to make about 8 curries. I do belong to a couple of FB groups which are good for ideas.

I love mine but I feel like I'm crap at using it.

I always put way too much water in!

Sizzle 'n' Stew one is ace.

I was about to put mine out having broken the bastarding lid last month when my mum said nooooo, we have a spare lid because we broke the cooker part!

There, wasn't that an exciting story

My mum uses hers (replacement for broken one) to cook large slabs of ham. I'll suggest to her the cola or whatever else was mentioned near the beginning of the thread.

I use mine for all sorts. Frequently, I just use it as a giant non stick pan on the hob

Ok, I've bought the ingredients for the five spice pork belly recipe to cook next week and have saved the butter chicken one for the future. Thanks!

@MrsWicket

Pork and pineapple curry sounds delicious...would you be able to tell me roughly how you make it please?

Pulled chicken teriyaki
Chicken thigh fillets (eh...some? Lidl do about 8 for less than £3)
Low salt soy sauce (lots, you can use regular salt soy sauce if you're feeling dangerous. Replace with tamari to make it gluten free)
Honey (lots, but less than the soy sauce)
Garlic (like...2 cloves? Cut small or grated)
Ginger (about an inch of it, cut into tiny bits)

Method - put it in the slow cooker. Put in enough liquid to mostly cover the chicken thighs. After about 4 or 5 hours use a sieve to pour the liquid into a pot, chuck the chicken in a big bowl.
Make a cornflour/water slurry (about a tablespoon of cornflour and a three-ish shot glasses of water - you can tell I don't do measurements - you want it to be more of a cloudy liquid than a paste), pour that into the sauce pot and bring up the temperature until it's bubbly. Stir it when you remember
Chuck the chicken in a bowl and shred it using two forks
Once the sauce is pretty thick mix the chicken and sauce together and then serve with rice or noodles and a sprinking of sesame seeds.

It's honestly the easiest recipe and so tasty (not healthy though).

@formerbabe
Here’s the recipe - it’s from an ancient Tower slow cooker book, circa early 80’s
Ingredients
Flour 40g
Salt 1tsp
Lean pork, cut into cubes (I buy the long pork loin joint)
Cooking oil 2tbsp
Onion, chopped 1 large
Curry powder 1tbsp
Paprika 1tbsp
Chicken stock 1/2pint
Dried chillies (I use chilli flakes, add as much as you like)
Mango chutney 1tbsp
Worcestershire sauce 1tsp
Can of pineapple cubes, including syrup
Bay leaves 2

Mix together the flour and salt then toss the port pieces till coated. Heat the cooking oil in large pan and brown off the meat. Transfer to slow cooker. In same oil, bing in the onion and the remaining ingredients and bring to boil. Transfer to slow cooker and stir well. I sometimes add mushrooms if I’ve got any that need using up. Add more flour if it needs thickening up. I usually bung it on at lunchtime on a low heat, so it’s ready for tea. Enjoy!

Forgot to add, that feeds a family of four comfortably

I love my slow cooker, i use it for
Soups
Chilli
Chicken curry
Gammon joint
Roasts
Stew with sausages and onions
Chicken casserole
Meatballs
couldn't be without mine

@MrsWicket

Thanks so much! Definitely will try it soon!

Meals from slow cooker don’t taste as nice in my opinion BUT I love it because it makes my life so much easier knowing that tea is ready when I get home, particularly if the boys have an after school club, it makes a massive difference being able to dish up curry, or stew, or casserole immediately rather than waiting 45 min with two grumpy kids

I am making @vampirethriller ribs today, I have Insta Pot and I use it a lot

I love my slow cooker.its great to pop it all in and come home to a 🥵 meal that I don't have to prep. It's a good tool for spending extra time with the family. We make
Pulled pork
Risotto
Paella
Meatballs
Bread
Tomato sauce
Curry
Apple purée and so forth

It's all good

I have one, which I wanted to use one night a week as DD goes from school to activity and I want her to eat pretty much as soon as she gets home. Prep time is usually not an issue, BUT - she doesn't really like "sauce". Exceptions are spag bol and chilli. So One week I make the bol and add spag when I get in, and the next week I make chilli.... are there any other non stew/curry options??

PP mentioned baked potatoes - do you literally just shove them in?

@gottastopeatingchocolate yes you can do that. Also pulled pork and chicken cooked in the Sc is
Nice too.

I can confirm that the recipe for ribs from @vampirethriller is really tasty, I used dijon mustard, Hot smoked paprika and 1/4 cup of vinegar, the sauce turned out very tasty and is almost gone. It will be my go to recipe, so easy and made out of ingredients I have in my cupboard.

Turkey drumstick. Very economical: one drumstick feeds 2-3 people for £2-£2.50. Very easy. Only drawback is that a drumstick won't quite fit into my medium-sized slow cooker, so I have to use a cleaver to break the bone in order to get it in.

This could make a great Christmas meal if you're feeding just a few people and you're on a tight budget. Plus it frees the oven up for cooking side dishes.

Fere they're great aren't they! The sauce freezes well too

For the browning/ more washing up issue - I have a Morphy Richards 'Sear and stew' model so I can put the inner part direct on the hob to start everything off and then transfer. However I agree you can't leave it all day or it will be over done. You can also get other slow cookers with a timer for a delayed start.

I don't use mine that often but that's partly because I've child is veggie so I'd have to do something else for him. Also DC not a fan of stews.

However I do use it for big batches of chilli or for keeping a big batch of curry warm for a family gathering. In fact I have two so I can have veggie in one and meat in the other! I don't get why you would do porridge or a cake in them as they are pretty quick to make the normal way.

I have made slow cooker bread. I must say I am pretty impressed. The toast is amazing. Tried pumpkin seed crust today.

Ooh fellow slow cooker fans... just tried Tesco 6 chicken sausages in SC for 3 hours. Zero watery emissions. Nothing.
Browned up super nice. Very meaty, a hint of herb. Just tumbled them about after 2 hours so they browned all over.