Cooking TipsHow To Save Time With Your Slow Cooker
The great thing about using a slow cooker is that you can prepare your meal in about 15 minutes and not have to worry about it anymore. When I rise in the morning, it seems that this is the time of day when I feel the most energized. This makes it an ideal time to add all of the ingredients into my slow cooker and head off to work.
Who wants to work all day and then come home and spend an hour or two preparing dinner? Not me! Though slow cookers will save you a lot of time, there are a few tips I can give you that can help you use your slow cooker more effectively.
The first thing that you can do to save time is prepare your foods the night before and refrigerate them. This will save you time in the morning because you only need to place your ingredients in the slow cooker and you are done! Some foods such as rice and pasta you will not be able to prepare ahead of time but most foods can be. Just do as much as you can. After all, you have enough to do in the morning with getting ready for work, breakfast, the kids and so on.
Being that the majority of popular slow cookers only have two settings of low and high, I have found that cooking on the lowest setting gives me the best results. A common problem with slow cookers is that they cook too hot and if you use the high setting, you have a good chance of overcooking your meal. I have never overcooked any food by using the low setting. Programmable crock pots are also an excellent idea because they make it literally impossible to cook something incorrectly because you can set and forget.
Many slow cooker recipes call for vegetables and if you are going to use fresh ones, you will want to plave these under the meat as they will take longer too cook. Canned vegetables cook fast and should be placed over the meat. Also, it is a good idea to thaw out the meat before placing it in the crock pot. Some people will put a frozen roast in a slow cooker but I have found that my roasts have cooked better when they are thawed out first.
I hope that these small suggestions will help you utilize your slow cooker better and save you time. You will find that as you use your slow cooker more and gain experience, you will develop your own habits and find other ways to save time.