Slow cooker - bad taste

[CkFa]

I have bought a slow cooker and everything I cook in it has a weird, unpleasant taste. Is this a thing? It's my second slow cooker and the old one was the same. Am I not seasoning good enough? I'm veggie so never cook meat it it. But it's the same taste whether I use the short or long time setting. Any clue where I'm going wrong?! Thanks

I found the same thing with my slow cooker, too. I found everything tasted vaguely metallic and grim. I'm veggie too, though, so perhaps they work better with meat?

What brand slow cooker do you have? I had a CrockPot and have wondered whether it was the brand that was the problem. But I'd need serious persuading that it wasn't going to happen again before dropping £££s on a new one.

Hoping others have more encouraging experiences to offer....

Is it a metallic sort of taste? Our first slow cooker was like this but we've been given one as a gift in more recent years and it's been fine x

Have you tried the slow cooker liners? They're available in some supermarkets(Aldi, Sainsbury's). It was a game changer for me.

I can't think why things would have a metallic taste? Our Crockpot is just a ceramic cookpot so no metal comes in contact with the food.

We use ours for casseroles (chicken, beef or mince for chilli) all the time and it's always delicious. We just add the onions and carrots and anything else I fancy (lentils, split peas, sweet potato, peppers, mushrooms etc) at the start and let everything stew for hours. Sometimes I use a Schwartz casserole sachet which always makes it tasty.

I find that unless a recipe is super-strong-flavoured - then slow cooker meals just taste of slow cookers.

Even more so when they're veggie (in fact the only recipe I can think of where I avoided L'essence de Slow Cooker was pulled pork, and that's because I used an entire bottle of smoked BBQ sauce on it).

Why use a liner @toothgenie ? In what way was it a game changer?

When I read the title, I really wanted to be shown a photo of a purple paisley slow cooker with orange diamanté trim or something.

I think it is the herbs that can cause this weird taste. We eat meat and some herbs deffo. give off a weird taste when cooked in the slow cooker.

I prefer my electic pressure cooker and hardly use my slow cooker. Slow cooking seems to overly soften everything and make it a bit bland. Makes me think of hospital mush.

Garlic. Do you use garlic?

I no longer add garlic to any slow cooker dishes. I find it leaves a weird taste. which is odd because if I'm doing something in the oven on low and slow or on the stove top, I'd throw whole cloves of garlic in and enjoy them all soft and mushy. But it doesn't work in the slow cooker. My slow cooker food is 1000 x better since I stopped adding garlic.

Thanks so much everyone, I'm glad it's not just me! I might give the liners a try maybe, and avoid garlic. It's so weird, definitely a metallic taste, even though it's a ceramic dish. I also have a crockpot. But prior to that it was a different brand (I can't remember which sorry) and it was the same. Thanks again all!

I find that with tomato based dishes and what has worked is to skim off the skin that forms where it meets the slow cooker edges

I never ever ever put things like onions and garlic in without browning first. Onions going straight in are rank and I think end up tasting like slightly off onions (which is a metallic taste)