Rebecca Woods - Foolproof Slow Cooker: 60 Essential Recipes that Make the Most of Your Slow Cooker

Publishing Director

Sarah Lavelle

Commissioning Editor

Stacey Cleworth

Series Designer

Emily Lapworth

Designer

Alicia House

Photographer

Rita Platts

Food Stylist

Rebecca Woods

Prop Stylist

Max Robinson

Head of Production

Stephen Lang

Senior Production Controller

Nikolaus Ginelli

First published in 2022 by Quadrille, an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing

Quadrille

5254 Southwark Street

London SE1 1UN

quadrille.com

Text Quadrille 2022

Photography Rita Platts 2022

Design and layout Quadrille 2022

Thanks to Lakeland for the brilliant slow cookers, as photographed .

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 9781787139008

Slow cookers have long since been regarded as a great way to create economical meals, able as they are to render inexpensive cuts of meat or cheap dried beans and pulses, for that matter into tender deliciousness. But never before has the cost of cooking the meal itself been so relevant. As fuel prices soar, the slow cooker sits smugly on work surfaces, cooking delicious meals for just a few pence worth of energy. The slow cooker is very much having a renaissance.

But, rather unfairly, they havent always been so in favour. Slow cooking very much went out of fashion for a couple of decades. The technique was associated with food that was mushy, brown and flavourless. And to be fair, some of it still is on the brown, homogenous side sometimes, a bowl of hearty brown stew is exactly whats called for! Still, theres far more to slow cooking than that.

Our approach to food has moved on since slow cookers were in their heyday. While I was growing up in the 1980s, simple stews and soups (perfect slow cooker fare) were very much a staple, alongside meat and two veg and the odd weekend curry for a treat. Thankfully our food horizons have broadened immensely in the subsequent two decades and so slow cooking today is about catching up to changing tastes and finding ways to recreate these new favourites in a classic appliance.

Saying that, the cookers themselves have now become more sophisticated and lend themselves to cooking with a little more nuance than just shoving it all in and hoping for the best. You can set timers, which make them start cooking when you want them to, or reduce the heat and keep food warm when the cooking is finished. Modern metal bowl inserts make baking cakes in slow cookers easier and some also allow you to place those bowls on the hob first so you can brown your meat in the same dish and save on washing up: the landscape is changing.

When I was researching for this book, I came across a long list of things youre not supposed to cook in a slow cooker pasta, rice, fish and seafood, green vegetables, any dairy I dont necessarily agree with this. You can make lovely rice and pasta dishes, you just have to approach them in a slightly different way and get used to your own slow cooker timings. If you add certain ingredients towards the end of cooking they are fine, and attempting less obvious dishes will massively broaden your dinner repertoire, rather than just using the device as a soup and casserole maker. But I do understand the appeal of filling a cooker and then being able to forget about it for hours, so there are a good number of those traditional recipes here, too.

I hope you enjoy the recipes and give them a try, but first, a few tips to get you started

Slow cookers come in a huge range of models they can have a large or small capacity, be round or oval, digital or manual, have a ceramic bowl or a metal one.

Im not going to go into huge detail about the process of choosing a slow cooker the likelihood is, if you have this book in your hands, you are already the owner of one. But some of these characteristics do need to be kept in mind as you cook, so here is how to approach some of the recipes to adapt them to your slow cooker.

The main thing is to get to know your cooker. Without set temperatures, they all cook slightly differently. Love it and become familiar with its quirks, and it will reward you with bowls full of hearty meals.

Size and shape

Slow cookers come in an enormous array of sizes, from the small 1.5 litre (1 quart) models suitable for one to two people, to large 6-litre (6-quart) ones that can cook a wholesome meal for a family of six and still leave you with leftovers. I have tested most of the recipes in this book in 3.5 litre (3 quart) slow cookers, as they are the most common, and a meal from one of these will happily feed a family of four.

Even if you are just cooking for one, using the slow cooker is a brilliant way to batch cook, and most of the recipes in this book will freeze well look for the freezer symbol on the page. If you do have a smaller cooker, you may find that simply halving a stew, soup, curry or casserole recipe will work.

There are also a few recipes that will require a large cooker. Large joints of meat such as whole lamb legs (see the recipe) will need more space, and an oval-shaped cooker is particularly useful for these as its longer.

Additionally, if you want to use your cooker as a bain marie, to gently cook dishes such as , you will need a cooker big enough to fit another vessel (or multiple small dishes) inside. Having a slightly larger one will allow you to be more adventurous in your slow cooking.

Material

Your slow cooker will have either a ceramic bowl or a metal bowl insert. Please be aware that the metal ones will get hotter and will heat up much more quickly than ceramic ones. The time brackets provided with the recipes have been calculated to take this into account, but if you are cooking in a ceramic bowl and the dish isnt done by the end of the cooking time, do give it a bit longer. Likewise, if you have a cooker with a metal insert and it seems to be cooking more quickly, adjust the recipe next time to match your cooker.

On the subject of materials, cookers with glass lids are very handy as they enable you to see whats going on without having to lift the lid. Slow cookers do things rather silently, so sometimes its nice to be able to see whats happening. You dont want to be too often I explain why!

Digital or manual

Digital cookers that you can programme are useful if you want to cook a recipe for an extended time while you are away from home. Once the time is up, they will switch to a keep warm setting that wont cook the food much more, but will keep it warm so you can eat it straight away when you are ready, and also keep the food at a safe temperature and prevent it from becoming a food poisoning risk. For soups, stews and large joints of meat, this is invaluable. But I would advise you not to keep dishes with more sensitive ingredients on this setting rice and pasta will get very mushy, and fish is easy to overcook, so these should be removed from the cooker as soon as the cooking time is up.

Using a slow cooker is simple, once you are aware of a few key rules. Begin with the recipes in the book and Ill guide you through, but once you start creating your own dishes, it will help to remember the following.