Are slow cookers shit?

[rainbowstardrops]

I mean, I know they’re not shit but I’m currently cooking a Thai beef dish and it looks absolutely nothing like the picture in the recipe book. It looks dull and watery and just so unappetising.
Am I being unreasonable to think that the bloody recipes in these books look nothing like the final result photos?
Oh and I put half of the chilli flakes in because one of mine doesn’t like spicy (I do) but this is even setting my mouth on fire!
Pah!

Every meal I’ve ever had out of a slow cooker tastes exactly the same. Overcooked tasteless institutional slop.

I love mine.

Stopped using mine. Any meat went from tough to shredded with no tender melting stage imbetween. Dry and tasteless shreds. Veggies all ended up a sludgy grey/brown colour. Most unappetising.

I only use mine to make cholent, a meat stew that Jews eat on shabbat. Due to the rules of shabbat cooking it needs to have been cooking since before shabbat. So from friday evening until saturday lunchtime. A lot of people love cholent, my family are meh about it, so I only make it when we have guests. (I am told my cholent is excellent)

Anyway, a few days ago an article popped up on my SM feed. Apparently the slow cooker was invented by a Jewish woman for exactly this reason. I don't know why I didn't know this.

https://jwa.org/blog/love-your-crockpot-you-have-cholent-thank-its-existence

fatty meat works best in cholent, my butcher sells a meat called 'cholent meat'. Lamb is also great.

Yes they are shit. They are only capable of cooking slop.

I do quite a lot of soups and stews in the slow cooker. Curries and pasta type things don’t work well for me though, they go mushy and starchy.

I think you might be right OP. Been debating whether to give mine away or try again with it. Everything I cook in it has a rank aftertaste which I think is the onion, but I persist in dragging it out when the the weather first drops to see if anything’s changed.

How long has it been in for?

The only thing I use mine for is mulled apple juice ...

In my opinion YES! Everything I made in mine was as you described. I gave it away and have never missed it.

I did have a slow cooker but every dish looked the same and smelt weird.

Got a multicooker which has a SC function which I have used once and took half the time too cook. It also has a sear function to brown meat and soften onions.

I love learning new things like this - thanks for sharing!

I did a Thai curry the other week that was lauded on the Facebook group. It just tasted like spicy beef stew. Having said that my Rogan Josh is delicious as is sweet potato curry as is my chilli. Think it depends entirely on what you're making.

There was a thread on here once about annoying colleagues. Someone had a colleague who would bring raw ingredients to work, put them in his mini SC UNDER HIS DESK and eat it at lunchtime!

Genuinely shocked at the amount of people that hate them. We use ours a lot and I’d really miss it if we didn’t have it. I’d have to make bolognese, curries, chilli, lamb, and pulled chicken standing about in the kitchen rather than leaving the slow cooker to it and coming back to dinner already sorted. It always tastes gorgeous.

If it's watery you are adding to much liquid i rarely add any occasionaly half a cup if it looks to dry .

😅 that’s genius! What a maniac 😂

I use my slow cooker for joints of tough meat and it is fabulous.
For other things, not so great.

Not a fan of a slow cooker...most stuff ends up tasteless and watery imo. Long slow cooking in the oven is a million times better and makes a better flavour.

You must always brown the meat first, never add extra liquid other than the tin of tomatoes, splash of wine or whatever you’re using, assume vegetables will contain a lot of liquid, and always keep the lid on.

assuming you adhered to all of the above and it’s still rubbish then it must be the recipe.

You need to use a lot less water/ liquid than any recipe says!

If you find it too watery towards the end, leave the lid off, it evaporates and so thickens up.

Different foods and meat need different cooking times and temps. Absolutely disgusting when people dump meat and veg and jars of sauce in and think that’s cooking. Lazy, gross slop

Second point: the pictures in cookery books. A long, long time ago, when I was an inexperienced cook, I made an apricot tart to serve to my favourite aunt and uncle who were visiting. Athough it tasted fine the appearance was really disappointing, nothing like the photo. When I told my uncle how disappointed I was he explained to me that food photos are a big con, and the perfectly rounded, glossy apricots were a) not cooked and b) covered in inedible glossy gloop to make an appealing photo. I bless him for that to this day because it has made all the difference in how I judge my success at home cooking.....and various magazine articles over the years have confirmed that the food in recipe photos is often not actually edible!
This is so true! When did you ever get a McD's burger that looked just like the picture? 🤔😄

I hope not as I’m currently cooking a ragu based on a Jamie Oliver recipe in the slow cooker BUT have already committed the cardinal sin of taking off the lid, twice 🤭