Longest cooking times for slow cooker?

[lindsaygii]

A friend has very kindly bought me a slow cooker, cos I'm a single mum, starting back at university to retrain so I can work and parent, yada yada yada.

So I really want her present to work out, because it was very well meant.

But, I have to leave the house by 7.30am, and won't get home before 4pm, probably a bit after most days. Baby usually has his tea around five, and I tend to eat after getting him to bed, say about seven.

I've been looking at SC recipes, and the max cooking time seems to be ten hours, and the shortest five. Plus, you need to fry things up before putting them in. So it seems that I won't be able to use it after all.

Have I missed something? Hope so!

1. I never fry anything before I put it in the slow cooker.

1. I've left casseroles in for 12 hours before now. The meat tends to fall apart, but I think that makes it even tastier!

Could you turn the slow cooker off when you get home (ie at 4.30pm, after 9 hours), and then just heat up your portion later?

i have a timer plugged into the wall for mine so it comes on about lunch time. i never brown stuff ever.

Thats' interesting. I thought of using a timer, but the book I have specifically says you can't do that because you have to fry first and add the stock hot.

Does yours have an automatic 'hot then low' function, moocowme? Or do you set it to medium or something like that?

I don't brown anything and often prepare it with cold stock/sauce at night, leave it in the fridge overnight and put it on to cook in the morning.

Experiment with it when you are in for the day, so you feel confident leaving it when you're out.

They are fab.

Great idea about the timer.

Right, well if two of you are cooking from cold then I'm going to try it. I'll get something going with a timer soon.

What I did find that looked good was a site with loads of slow-cooking recipes on it. They're mostly American, but food is food, right?

allrecipes.com