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.

just tried the gammon and sugar last night, was tasty and dd loved it

I used a 1.2kg unsmoked joint and 400g light broken sugar.
I put 3/4 of the sugar in the bottom of the slow cooker and rubbed the rest of the sugar over the joint.
left it on low for 8 hours, turned once halfway through. definitely making it again!

Ooh that sounds nice Once. My gammon joint lasted until yesterday when I finished it off in a sandwich. Need to work out a recipe to do for this weekend but may well do a beef joint for Sunday dinner.

So glad I cam across this thread!! I have been using my slow cooler for months but find I am doing the same things all the time (chicken/beef/sausage casseroles) and am looking for inspiration!

I have found that a lot of recipe books for slow cookers do not contain many recipes that the DC would like or eat!

Does anyone have any good recipes for soup that the DC would eat? That's one thing I have not made in the slow cooker yet and am looking for a good recipe.

When I cook my joints in the slow cooker, I never put any liquid in and they all just fall off the bone....IMO its the ONLY way to cook a joint of meat!

My SC has 3 settings, low, high or auto, and I now always put it on low. "Auto" is supposed to know when to cook it high and then automatically turn it down to low, but I found when it was on this setting, that it was sticking to the pot......so I only ever use low now :)

Well I am mightly chuffed with the bbq pulled pork! It is so tasty and tastes even better than when I had it in a well known mexican restaurant, I had loads left and all for about £4.

thanks so much for the recipe!

Glad you liked it justired. What kind of ginger beer did you use in th end? I've got a bottle of the alcoholic stuff sitting in my cupboard and I'm thinking of trying this next time. Has anyone else used this?

It was a non alcoholic crabbies one, I didn't particularly like the pork just cooked in the ginger beer but then I don't really like it, so maybe just be. I brought the Heinz bbq sweet sauce it was yummy!

It's much yummier with the sauce. Next time, try making the Bourbon (Jack Daniels) sauce and sticking this back into the slow cooker with the shredded pork for another hour or two.

Will defo give it a try sickandsad!

I have made a lovely chicken tagine and have one called Chicken Tangier that I am going to try soon.

Chicken tagine is basically:
Skinless chicken thighs (maybe 6 or so) or other chicken bits
2 chopped onions
A good few cloves of garlic, crushed
A good two handfuls of chopped dried apricots
Chicken stock -- about half a pint
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Spices 1 teasp each cinnamon, ginger (or fresh ginger finely chopped), cayenne or pepper flakes (maybe a bit less/to taste), cumin, coriander plus fresh coriander chopped, salt and pepper (less than 1 teasp pepper unless you love pepper)
Chickpeas
Honey
Olive oil
Optional: 2 chopped and diced carrots and 2 preserved lemons.

Brown chicken, onions and garlic in a pan and add to crockpot.
Add the rest of the ingredients except tin of chickpeas.
Stir, cover, cook on high 3-4 hours or low about 6 hours.
Add chickpeas for last hour.
If you want to thicken the sauce, add tomato paste, stir in and cook until sauce thickens. You could stir in some fresh coriander to serve too.

I also found it's possible to make cakes in the crockpot. Spent last night and a lot of today munching on a lovely lemon cake, slightly too browned on one part of the bottom but otherwise lovely and the DDs were all excited about baking it. During the week last week we made gingerbread.

There are a lot of recipes on the internet. Best method is to place a wide piece (4-5") of folded over tin foil into the crockpot and hanging out the sides to act as a handle and lifter, and bake the cake in a greased and wax paper lined deep ovenproof dish what fits into the crockpot, with the crockpot lid covering it all. My recipe calls for baking on high 1.5 to 1.75 hours but I found turning it down to low for the last 30 minutes prevented burning from getting out of hand.

'deep ovenproof dish what fits into the crockpot..'

Posting in my best My Fair Ladyesque there.

If you want a really authentic American bbq taste add a teasp or so of celery seeds to your pulled pork or beef recipes, plus pepper flakes or a shake of Tabasco, and a little brown sugar and cider vinegar.

Mmm these all sound delicious.

I'm just about to stick a beef joint in mine with a bit of water on the bottom...!

I had a bit of a panic about wether it should be browned or not and on High or Low so after a lot of googling DH is browning it while I type on MN get DS dressed and then I'm going to stick it on Low for 8 hours as we want it for dinner tonight and not lunch.

Lots of recipes I found online do it with stock or sitting on veg but I found a few that just chuck it in and I want to keep it simple so that's what I'm doing.

I'm sure it will be lovely wingdefence. I'm doing my second whole chicken in there for dinner tonight as it was so successful last week

Well all I can say is that YUM - I am certainly becoming a convert!

We put it on at 9am (I had put the SC on High to preheat half hour before with an inch of water in) on Low, turned it over after about 5 hours and it was ready by 4:30 (7.5hrs) but we went out to see some friends so I stuck it on Keep Warm and had it when we got back at 6:30.

I'm a rubbish meat carver but it was really easy to get it thin without completely collapsing but it was extremely tender. Perhaps slightly on the dry side but next time I'd eat it after being cooked instead of keeping it warm (we didn't ant to take it out before we went out in case it did dry/get tough).

Really looking forward to having it tomorrow night and seeing how it carves etc after a day.

Oh and DH said 'I'd just roast a beef joint for 1.5hrs in the oven anyway, it's very easy even not in the SC' but with my roast phobia (ie the thought of cooking one scares me! ), this really may be a cooking revolution for me

Making tanfastic's carrot and lentil soup today. My sister got me Lakeland's slow cooker cook book and there are some nice recipes in there. Think I will set myself a challenge to cook a meal in the slow cooker at least once a week while on maternity leave so I get used to it before I go back to work and have to use it in anger.

Very excited!

Soup yummy, I used our hand held blender and I don't think it makes it as smooth as my liquidiser (which is currently kaput) but the flavours were lovely. Although the DDs did tell me it wsn't as good as Grandma's.

lousiana, do you think it needed the carrots to be grated? I'm just not sure whether I could be arsed bothered to grate that amount of carrots

I used my slow cooker as a nice, warm, draught -free place to set my bowl of pizza dough to rise. Warmed it up on low for a while then turned it off so it was pleasantly warm, then set the bowl wrapped in a few kitchen cloths into the pot and put the lid on top.

Now that is a great idea My kitchen is cold fairly cool and I never think it'd be a good place to try to prove dough but preheating the SC and using that makes sense. Thanks math!

Love the dough rising haven idea! Brilliant.

I tried the gammon with sugar the other day. It was lovely. Maybe a little on the dry side but I'd done ours on high for the first hour as I wasn't sure it was completely defrosted and I think now it must have been. DH didn't like it though although he's not keen on gammon in general so i think that's more him than the recipe.

Feeling a bit happier about the whole idea now. The beef had really put me off but I'm pleased with the gammon. Considering a chicken next...

My kitchen is horribly draughty too and my oven has its quirks, hard to really control temp -- necessity is the mother of invention.

To help thickening up a casserole in the SC I add some pearl barley. It seems to soak up some of the excess liquid. I've had great success making a tarka daal recently and am going to try the gammon in coke at the weekend

Right, 1.2kg pork cracking joint (never mind about the crackling I know, but I couldn't be bothered to cut it off) sitting on top of 300g light brown sugar and 100g brown demerara (as I'd run out of light brown!), with some of the light brown rubbed into the skin all over for good measure.

That looked like a lot of sugar!

I completely forgot again I was going to do it so it only went in 30 mins ago but I'm hoping it'll be ready for dinner tonight.

Fingers crossed!

What have others done with the sticky sugary juices at the end of cooking?

Mmm it was really nice, although DH was at the amount of sugar I'd put in there! It was slightly on the dry side but I think that's just one potential downside of pork. We had it with potato+sweet potato mash, veg and white sauce.

I spooned some of the sweet juices over the pork and tried to reduce what was left in a saucepan but it didn't do much so I've left it overnight and will see if I can salvage anything from it this morning!