DeVito - Christmas slow cooking : over 250 hassle-free holiday recipes for the electric slow cooker

I ts that magical time of year again. As October turns to November and then to December, the days and weeks fill up with special gatherings. From school parties to work potlucks to family gatherings, to the most special gatheringsChristmas Eve, Christmas morning, and Christmas daytheres one common element. Food! Everyone wants to taste the flavors of the holidays.

Between the extra-special dinners, the festive invites, and the everyday meals, menu planning can get tricky. In months filled with shopping, decorating, wrapping presents, and entertaining, who has time to slave over the stove?

No one.

But thanks to your slow cooker and these recipes, holiday cookingand eatingcan be simple.

You wont have to baste, or share oven or stovetop space with other dishes, or worry about burning anything, or be stuck at home the whole time dinner is cooking. If youve only prepared meats, soups, or stews in the slow cooker, you are in for multiple treats as you learn to prepare breakfasts, desserts, and a variety of side dishes. Youll find recipes for everything from Christmas favorites like baked ham, prime rib, mashed potatoes, and fruitcake to extravagances like chocolate mousse and duck confit, to yummy classics like sausage-and-egg breakfast casserole, or artichoke and spinach dip, short ribs, chicken stew, and mushroom risotto.

Learn to make risotto without having to be the only one in the kitchen, stirring constantly, while the rest of the party gathers round the fire in the other room. Wake up Christmas morning to overnight eggnog-cranberry steel-cut oatmeal. Indulge in a citrus-cinnamon spiced ham for dinner. And proudly pass apricot glazed chicken wings at your company potluck.

Weve got a recipe for baked ziti that doesnt even require that you cook the pasta before putting it in the slow cooker. Some sauce, the pasta, some cheese, and you come home 6 to 8 hours later to a marvelous baked ziti. And it is delicious enough to take to a party, too.

The slow cooker is also a great tool for making the best holiday drinksfor everything from mulled wine to steamy white Russians. Any and all of these make for great fireside fare, or a way to keep a large batch of something special warmed up for carolers, the guys who put up your lights, or the neighbors who help you shovel after a snowstorm.

With this book, youll learn to really use the slow cooker. Youll get a feel for cooking times, amount of liquids, and what to throw in when. Youll grow more comfortable experimenting with ingredients, including spices. Youll discover that, just like wrapping presents or making lists or heading out with your family to look at the light displays in the neighborhood, youll be counting on your slow cooker to help create the kinds of memories that these moments are all about.

You might even ask Santa for another slow cooker.

L uckily for all of us who are science challenged, it doesnt take a degree in physics to operate a slow cooker. Its about the easiest machine there is on the market. Its certainly far less complicated than an espresso machine or even a waffle maker. In this chapter youll learn about slow cookers and how to get the best results from them.

Slow cookers are inexpensive to operate; they use about as much electricity as a 60-watt bulb. They are also as easy to operate as flipping on a light switch.

Slow cookers operate by cooking food using indirect heat at a low temperature for an extended period of time. Heres the difference: Direct heat is the power of a stove burner underneath a pot, while indirect heat is the overall heat that surrounds foods as they bake in the oven.

You can purchase a slow cooker for as little as $20 at a discount store, while the top-of-the-line ones sell for more than $200. They all function in the same simple way; what increases the cost is the bells and whistles factors. Slow cookers come in both round and oval shapes, but they operate the same regardless of shape.

Food is assembled in a pottery insert that fits inside a metal housing and is topped with a clear lid. The food cooks from the heat generated by the circular heating wires encased between the slow cookers outer and inner layers of metal. The coils never directly touch the crockery insert. As the element heats, it gently warms the air between the two layers of metal, and it is the hot air that touches the pottery. This construction method eliminates the need for stirring because no part of the pot gets hotter than any other.

On the front of this metal casing is the control knob. All slow cookers have Low and High settings, and most also have a Stay Warm position. Some new machines have a programmable option that enables you to start food on High and then the slow cooker automatically reduces the heat to Low after a programmed time.

The largest variation in slow cookers is their size, which range from tiny 1-quart models that are excellent for hot dips and fondue but fairly useless for anything else to gigantic 7-quart models that are excellent for large families and large batches.

Most of the recipes in this book were written for and tested in a 4- or 5-quart slow cooker; that is what is meant by medium . Either of those sizes makes enough for four to eight people, depending on the recipe. In a few cases, such as for lamb shanks that take up a lot of room as they cook, a large slow cooker is specified.

Rival introduced the first slow cooker, the Crock-Pot, in 1971, and the introductory slogan remains true more than 35 years later: It cooks all day while the cooks away. Like such trademarked names as Kleenex for paper tissue or Formica for plastic laminate, Crock-Pot has almost become synonymous with the slow cooker. However, not all slow cookers are Crock-Pots, so the generic term is used in this book.

Questions always arise as to the safety of slow cookers. The Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture approves slow cooking as a method for safe food preparation. The lengthy cooking and the steam created within the tightly covered pot combine to destroy any bacteria that might be present in the food. But you do have to be careful.