It's the annual "I got a slow cooker for Christmas, please come and share your best recipes/recipe book suggestions" thread

[BlatherskitedaboutChristmas]

MIL has bought be an enormous Crock Pot slow cooker. It looks lovely but I have no clue what to make in it. It's 5.7 litres but there's only me, DH, 5 yo DS and a very, very picky 3 yo DD.

Suggestions would be very welcome otherwise it's probably going to end up stashed in a cupboard and forgotten about and that would be sad.

are you doing pork with barbecue sauce? if so i just had the sauce in for about 1 hour. you might find it goes dry for 2?

Dreaming, how long should I cook it?

Gammon in coke I did on low all day and turned a couple of times to stop the top drying out.

I'm doing crackling in the oven, pulled pork in the sc and then serve it in rolls with coleslaw, corn on the cob and sweet potato wedges, can't wait!

if its a large lump of meat i would do all day on high. for small bits of meat, or bolognese i would do on auto on mine or high from say 9-4. But reading the threads on here i think the newer models sound like they might be a bit hotter than mine - so i think you need to keep an eye on your cooker (try not to open lid too often - so maybe check at lunchtime). beef stew i did on high yesterday from 9-6 - but it was full to the top.

I have 2DC that are fussy and won't eat 'sloppy food' can you cook chicken etc. and veg without any fluid or will it be really dry?

Thanks

i can cook chicken portions in mine - would suggest cooking with some liquid or will be dry and choose legs/thighs rather than breast. whole chicken doesn't work in mine as hard/dry on outside and raw in centre - but others seem to do it successfully on here. a lump of cheap beef cooked in wine or beer works well in mine. and probably cheap lamb cuts if i could afford and shoulder of pork is good - with barbecue sauce espec.

These recipes are amazing :) think ill be trying a few this week :)

I did a fantastic soup in mine yesterday :
600g carrots grated (no need to peel)
1 litre veg stock
140 split red lentils
2 tbsp olive oil
pinch crushed chilli
1 tsp cumin seeds
125 ml milk

Bung it all in the slow cooker (excluding milk) for 3 hours on high.
add the milk and then whizz up with hand blender to required consistency.
(I used 100ml milk and a spoonful of creme freche).

Serve with crusty bread or naan.

It is bloody lovely!

Forgot to say it serves four bowls and is 238 calories a serving.

Mmm, soup is a great idea. I bet the flavours really develop.

It's really nice, in fact I ordered soup of the day in a restaurant before Christmas and I swear it was this soup, it was identical.

Popping my slow cooker cherry so to speak. Bought a 6.5l Breville at the weekend so today am trying a whole chicken on a bed of chopped peppers, rosemary and chopped tomatoes. Fingers crossed...!
Fab recipes on here that I can't wait to try

Im attempting a chicken chausser as we speak. My first attempt was a beef casserole and the meat was so tender i had to use a spoon but it lacked a bit in flavour so have added stock cubes this time to help. Smells good so far!

justtired I wonder if you can use the casserole packet mix things (that are just herbs& flour etc really)? If so, do you think less water for the mix should be used or as they tends to have some sort of thickening agent in them, the normal amount of water as per the instructions would be okay?

How do you do yours?

Wingdefence - I used one of those mixes for the casserole but because I added lots of veg and meat I added more water than instructed on the packet because I wanted to cover all the meat and veg but obviously the taste was watered down. This time I,used the packet mix again but added 2 stock cubes too so hoping it will have more flavour.
I'm thinking you don't need to cover all the contents as it doesn't thicken and the veg make more liquid whilst cooking so might use less next time.

How do you do yours?

if beef stew tastes a bit bland you can add teaspoon of mustard (just gives it a bit of oomph) or a garlic clove or fried bacon lardons, or all 3

A lovely Mumsnet/Twitter friend of mine just sent me this Loads of recipes here that look good

Pork turned out lovely with enough for dinner and 20 rolls for the freezer. DC really liked it because it apparently tastes like macdonalds BBQ sauce - heathens!

Ooh bluelights, what's the recipe?

justtired, I've only used my SC once but will do a casserole next. I've got casserole beef defrosting and a packet, and some leftover Basics bacon in the fridge so I'll do it tomorrow with that added in for extra flavour.

Hope yours has worked out better this time :)

Plus side - the chicken was so so moist and I don't think I've ever managed to get so much meat off a bird before.

On down side the tomatoes and peppers were just too watery so I sieved/pureed them, added a tin of chopped tomoatoes and made a sauce separately. Kids still devoured the lot with rice!

Mmm weblette. I read that making stock in a SC is really easy so don't chuck the carcass yet!

Right, second time of using, wish me luck

Have gone for a beef & mushroom casserole - a cross between a recipe in the book I bought (link above) but used the Colman's beef casserole packet mix instead of stock and tomato puree, plus didn't have carrots or celery but did add the Basics bacon chopped up for extra flavour. It's also got sliced potatoes in it.

It's on Low but part of me can't see how such a small amount of heat will cook it, even over a long time

I've layered it as well because the recipe said you can either brown the veggies to soften them first or chuck them in raw but put them at the bottom. (As my idea of using the SC is to make life easier (and less washing up) I'm going to try to get away with pre-cooking/browning anything.)

So I put the chopped onions and sliced potatoes in first, then mushrooms, then beef and bacon and covered it (some meat still sticking up a bit) with the packet mix made up with 1.75 pints of water.

We will see how it turns out later...!

*without pre-cooking/browning

Dreaming - thankyou for the mustard top will definitely give that a try!
Wing - I put everything in raw and put the root veg at the bottom and mushroom on top as,they don't take as long to cook,with meat on the top I,kept looking at it thinking it's not even brown yet...but all of a sudden it was working, hope yours turned out well.

My chicken chasseur was a bit watery so added some gravy granules and it thickened up and added flavour, was really tasty!