slow cooker disaster confession thread

[FootprintsInTheSnow]

In the manner of the conspiracy of silence about the pain and challenge and indignity of childrearing, I feel culpable for being part of the conspiracy of not admitting the slow cooking learning curve/disaster tally.

I lurveee my slow cooker; wouldn't be without it, have 2 (...same applies to my DC) - and will always wade in to a slow cooking thread.

But for the record, to reassure other starter-slowcooks that their experience is normal, here are my most woeful misfires.

• Slow cooking chicken breast all day. It murders it. Texture of shoe leather.
• I learnt that yogurt separates when heated. Lumpy curry anyone?
• Cabbage raises an unholy stink in the house. Not the welcome-home smell I had in mind!
• Pasta becomes mutant monster pasta, sucking up all the liquid around it and growing to ten times it's normal size.
• Beef stew. I can do it now, but for reasons I still don't understand, my first one end up with the chunks of beef having the size, shape and consistency of marbles.

This thread is open for confession!

I got my slow cooker as a wedding present, over 14yrs ago. I assumed that as it was a slow cooker, you could cook things all day. So set it up with sweet and sour chicken and went to work. Came home 10hrs later to find a burning smell and some charred chicken stuck to the bottom of the pot. Oops. It wasn't a proper slow cooker, just a pot on a hotplate where you cooked stew etc. for a couple of hours. Silly manufacturers, for not making this clear, or silly me for not reading the instructions properly .

I have long since given it away but did use it (as per instructions) for a few years.