Slow Cooker

The slow cooker is an amazing appliance. It can make everything from paste e fagioli (a traditional Italian soup of pasta and beans that’s so much more than the sum of its parts) to the easiest BBQ shredded chicken (we promise that you’ll never make it any other way). It’s also useful for non-food projects, like making soup, potpourri, or candles. But here’s the thing — and we’re sorry to disappoint you — your slow cooker cannot do all of the things.

This can make all the difference.

Whether you celebrate Soup-tember or Crock-tober, fall is always officially soup season. And while we love slow cooker soups, stews, and saucy braises of all kinds, the slow cooker brings its own set of challenges when it comes to getting that creamy, comforting soup texture just right. Slow cookers that heat as low and slow, as their name implies, rely on heat that’s captured by their lid being in place. That means there is no evaporation happening, like with stovetop soups.

Welcome to Snapshot Cooking, the home of Kitchn’s easiest recipes. These mini recipes are so simple you can practically cook from the before-and-after snapshot itself. If you’re on the market for a new winning chicken dinner, say hello to five brand-new contenders. These set-it-and-forget-it meals require just five ingredients, and the slow cooker basically does all the work for you. Sounds too good to be true, right?

Even though cooking raw meat in your slow cooker straight from the freezer is a no-no, that doesn’t mean all ingredients from the freezer are off limits when it comes to this ultra-handy appliance. The slow cooker is always reliable for delivering easy dinners, and when you start with your freezer, you’ll see it can be easier still.

When you cook up perfectly tender, creamy macaroni and cheese in the slow cooker, it can feel you’ve won the dinner Olympics. You’ve got a dinner everyone will love while the slow cooker did all the work. Pasta in the slow cooker has a few pitfalls, though — it can either be undercooked or overcooked, depending on just a few subtle changes. These three tips will protect you from sad slow cooker pasta and make you a champion of dinner once again.

Whether you’re headed to a potluck dinner, a tailgate party, or the kids’ soccer practice, there will come a time when you need to transport a slow cooker full of delicious, piping-hot food. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, no? If your small appliance doesn’t have built-in latches to keep the lid in place, you’re gonna need some of these brilliant tips for transporting a full slow cooker.

Here's how I make my slow cooker the hero of meal prep.

No matter what kind of slow cooker chicken dinner you have slotted in your meal plan, it’s bound to be both easy and delicious. And to make it even better, here are seven tips I always rely on. While it’s always helpful to preheat your slow cooker, it’s especially important when adding seared chicken or sautéed aromatics, like with our Kerala-style chicken curry.

Brisket isn’t a dish you make every day (most of us only cook it a few times a year), so it helps to have a refresher — especially when making it in the slow cooker. Just a few tips will ensure your brisket braises into its tangy, tender best. Avoid these common pitfalls and you’ll be rewarded with a fork-tender brisket you will be proud to serve.

One of the huge benefits of meal prepping as part of a meal planning routine is that it allows you to add long-cooking foods — like broths and braises — to your busy weeknight meals. We asked our Meal Plan Club contributors for their favorite slow cooker meal prep hacks and the results were surprising. The meal prep roast chicken is something of a classic, right? You can let it cook while you prep vegetables or salads for the week.

Your slow cooker helps you get dinner on the table during busy weeks, prepare make-ahead meals (and desserts!), stretch your food budget, and eat more healthfully. What I’m trying to say is that your slow cooker is your number-one ally in the kitchen. Which is why it should come as no surprise that it’ll make Thanksgiving and Friendsgiving a little easier. Here’s how.

Aside from using it to get dinner on the table on busy nights, I always lean on my slow cooker when I need to keep food or drinks warm for a crowd — it’s an invaluable tool at parties and potlucks. But sometimes I wish I had another slow cooker handy to keep a second dish warm, especially come Super Bowl time when I have multiple dips and apps laid out.

The slow cooker is my answer to everything from hands-off meals on busy nights to comforting desserts. There’s nothing it can’t do. And the best way to truly get the most out of it is knowing all the best tips, tricks, and hacks that will make it live up to its full potential. Your slow cooker is the best tool in your kitchen to make an extra-big batch of caramelized onions.

One of a slow cooker’s best characteristics is its ability to cook a meal for you while you do a hundred other things. Dump the makings of a hearty chili into one, let it do its thing while you go about your day, and return home to a warm dinner ready and waiting. The only kicker is that some slow cooker recipes call for a shorter cook time than you want. If you’re out for eight hours, a recipe that takes just four hours just isn’t going to work.

That thing that saves my weeknight dinners? I don’t call it a Crock-Pot®, or even the more generic “crockpot,” which technically isn’t a word, at least not according to spellcheck. I call it a slow cooker, because that’s what it is and I’m a stickler when it comes to words and not the least bit dogmatic when it comes to dinner.

A better slow cooker dinner starts here.

The combination of chili and cheese is always a party in your mouth — spicy, salty, and just enough of an umami kick to keep you coming back for more — so it makes sense that the flavor profile works wonders with a party snack like Chex Mix. All you need to make this happen is a little chili powder and cheddar cheese powder. You’ll need a big batch of basic Chex Mix on hand before you can go and jazz it up.

Your taco night requires snacks like chips, salsa, guac, and now this Tex-Mex Chex Mix. Spicing up the classic party mix is easy with the help of taco seasoning. The spice blend of chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and salt is sure to make your Chex Mix the life of the fiesta. You’ll need a big batch of basic Chex Mix on hand before you can go and jazz it up. Luckily, churning some out couldn’t be easier — especially when you lean on your slow cooker.

When snowy winter days roll in and you crave the comfort of foods that are best when slowly simmered all day long, your slow cooker and Dutch oven are the two top contenders for the job. But for me and my favorite types of cooking, there’s one that really rises to the task. It’s the one I choose again and again. On chilly snow days when I’m hunkered down inside, I crave the warmth of comfort foods like soup, chili, and pulled meat — food that simmers all day long.

Inspired by one of our favorite soups, we’re breaking out the slow cooker for a warm, creamy, veggie-flecked cheese dip that will get your crowd cheering. This riff replicates the satisfying indulgence of broccoli cheddar soup, with a warm dip that relies on your slow cooker and the convenience of the freezer aisle. All you need is some thawed, frozen chopped broccoli to pull it off. Set your slow cooker to warm and add about 2 cups of cheese dip (homemade or store-bought) to the bowl.

There are those who go to Super Bowl parties for the game, and those who are there for the food (that’s me!). Inspired by classic taco dip, this is the warm and cheesy bean dip that will win over both sides of the party. This riff takes the three best layers of any taco dip — the beans, cheese, and salsa — and brings them together in one warm appetizer, with the help of the slow cooker. It’s hearty, a little indulgent, and, depending on the salsa you choose, spicy.

When you want to really up the ante with basic bean or cheese dip, look no further than your slow cooker and some crumbled Italian sausage. This is the duo with the power to transform ordinary dip into an easy appetizer that’s a flavorful, hearty touchdown for any tortilla chip. This meaty upgrade is packed with herbs and spices and lots of texture, thanks to Italian sausage. It also helps to make it extra filling. Want to punch up your dip even more?

If one of your goals for the new year is to focus on eating a more wholesome diet, the slow cooker is one of the most helpful tools in the kitchen to get you there. Instead of thinking about specific foods to add to your weekly meal plan, first consider the appliance that will get you there. Here are seven smart ways to utilize your slow cooker to prepare more wholesome meals throughout the week. From breakfast bowls to salads to tacos, shredded chicken is a mealtime superstar.

Meghan introduced us all to the everyday beauty of miracle meals, the dinners that emerge miraculously through sheer wit and pluck. But we need miracles at breakfast, too — perhaps even more so, given how tough it can be to eat a hearty breakfast on a busy morning. And miracles do emerge to rescue you from breakfast poverty — it’s time for you to know the magic of the slow cooker breakfast casserole.

The slow cooker egg casserole might just be the very best breakfast to ever make its way into your kitchen. Whether you cut it up and turn it into a breakfast sandwich or spoon it onto a plate, there’s a lot to love about a hot and satisfying meal that cooks while you sleep. Ready to master the slow cooker egg casserole? These are the five tips that will get you there. Before adding any ingredients to the bowl of the slow cooker, remember to coat it with non-stick cooking spray first.

These are the kits you prep and package now to save time later. The real beauty of these slow-cooker breakfast kits is their versatility. With a standard template, it’s easy to mix and match ingredients to make your favorite variation. There’s no set recipe, but rather a basic template to help you bring these kits together. The template calls for standard components, not including the eggs, which get added fresh when you’re ready to cook.

Egg casseroles made in the slow cooker are something of a breakfast miracle. With a short ingredient list, little work, and cooking that happens while you sleep, this miracle meal offers a big reward for minimal input — as long as you follow this one important rule. The key to a great egg casserole doesn’t involve fancy ingredients or adding extra steps to the prep work.

If you’ve ever tried online recipes and found them to be slightly less awe-inspiring in real life than they were on Pinterest, I’m with you. In fact, I recently tried the top five slow cooker recipes on Pinterest and, for the most part, they were a big disappointment. But all is not lost! Those recipes could have been a success with just a few simple tweaks. Here’s how to upgrade any slow cooker recipe so you can have superstar meals with very little prep time and hassle.

Consider this your road map for harnessing the power of the slow cooker during the summer. While the basic tenets of using this appliance remain the same, there is a tailored set of knowledge that’s going to help you get the most out of it come summer. From recipes to all the tips that will make you successful, here’s what you need to know about summer slow-cooking. “Set it and forget it” still leaves room for error.

I am a slow-cooker convert. Growing up, I thought the only thing you could do with a slow cooker was make beef stew and chili. It was good beef stew, but I never understood the point of buying a single appliance for the two recipes we only ever used it for. I’m happy to say I was so wrong. A slow cooker is one of the most versatile appliances in the kitchen. Pot roast? Check. Delicious sloppy joes? Check. Chicken tacos? Yes! Even bread? You get where this is going.

Breakfast really can feel like a chore on those crazy weekday mornings, leaving you all too often to skip it entirely. But lean on your slow cooker to make a few morning meal staples and suddenly it’s not so hard. Toss the ingredients in at night or on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and breakfast will be ready whenever you are. If you ever thought baking your own bread was too fussy, then you haven’t tried baking it in a slow cooker.

While you might associate the slow cooker with colder months (the stews! The chilis! The meats!), it shouldn’t collect dust the second it gets hot out. In fact, it can save you a lot of time and won’t heat your kitchen up. That’s why we asked our readers to share their best recipes and ideas for using the slow cooker this summer. Here are six smart ideas to inspire you during the coming months. I use it year-round, for all meals. Breakfast, cinnamon rolls are great.

For years I’ve refused to own a slow cooker, which may come as a surprise, given my fellow colleagues’ love for the appliance. But it’s not because I don’t believe it’s a convenient tool in the kitchen — it’s 100 percent because I just don’t have the space! Living in a tiny New York City apartment, I barely have room for a few basic pots and pans, let alone a slow cooker.

The first time I used my electric pressure cooker, I hit the start button and ran out of the room. Of course I’d read that modern pressure cookers were perfectly safe when used correctly — fear, however, allows no room for logic. My grandmother had once tried pressure-cooking, and I grew up listening to her tell the story of scrubbing tomato sauce off the ceiling after the ill-fated attempt. So I was fairly certain that my pressure cooker would malfunction.

Ketchup and mustard are classic summertime condiments. And while I certainly have nothing against them, sometimes the occasion calls for a burger, hot dog, or brat topping that’s a bit more satisfying, sophisticated, or fun. Making a sauce that meets any (and perhaps even all) of those qualities doesn’t take much — especially when you’ve got the slow cooker to help out. These sauces go a long way. They’re surprisingly simple (hello, three ingredients!

Kitchen gadgets, unlike tomatoes, don’t have a season. Sure, you’re more likely to use your ice cream machine in the middle of August when you need to cool off and there’s plenty of fresh fruit to use up, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it in January. The same thing goes for your slow cooker.

Let it do the work while you play.

Cooking a whole chicken in the slow cooker almost feels too good to be true. It produces a chicken so moist and tender that the meat practically falls off the bone. It requires just one ingredient and only a couple minutes of prep work. It’s so simple that it feels like there should be a catch. No, there’s no catch — it’s really that good — but there is one very important thing you need to do before putting the bird into the slow cooker.

Sometimes the exact recipe you need is one that cooks low and slow for hours. Turn on the slow cooker in the morning and by dinnertime it’s perfectly cooked, with its welcoming smell drifting through the kitchen. Other times, you need dinner on the table extra fast. And that’s when you turn to the pressure cooker. So is it possible to turn your favorite slow-cooker recipe into one that can be cooked up in less than an hour in the pressure cooker? Definitely!

I’d argue the slow cooker is the most convenient appliance in the kitchen. With minimal attention it turns out totally satisfying meals from breakfast through dessert. Run it all day, or let it do its thing all night — both work equally well. Just be sure you have these tips down for successful slow-cooking every time. This is particularly important when you’re sautéing aromatics, vegetables, or meat before adding them to the slow cooker.

Poached eggs are a glorious thing. It’s easy enough to make them on the stovetop when you’re just cooking one or two, but for making a larger batch of poached eggs, it’s time to reach for the slow cooker. The easiest way to make a whole bunch of poached eggs at once is with the slow cooker. As with any slow-cooker recipe, this process does take longer than the stovetop method. But we don’t rely on our slow cookers for quick meals, right?

You wouldn’t leave the oven or stove on when you leave the house to run errands or head to the office, so why is the slow cooker an exception? Is it really OK to leave it on all day on your kitchen counter when no one is home? People do this all the time, but many aren’t truly confident that it’s 100 percent safe — I, for one, am one of those people. So I did a little digging to get the hard facts.

Arguably, the most crucial flavor in a dish comes from the very first moments, when you sauté a few aromatics like chopped onions and garlic before proceeding with the recipe. That’s when those simple flavors start to build, which eventually enhances your final result.

Slow cookers and Dutch ovens are the masters of low-and-slow cooking. These vessels are ideal for everything from soups to stews to braises, so it’s no surprise that recipes written for a Dutch oven can easily be made in a slow cooker, and vice versa. With the help of a few small tweaks, you can ensure Dutch-oven-to-slow-cooker success every time.

If you read through slow-cooker recipes, you’ll notice a majority of them call for greasing the insert with nonstick cooking spray before adding the ingredients to it. But is it really necessary? If it’s something like soup or stew, there’s enough liquid in the slow cooker that the ingredients won’t stick to it. But for something like mashed potatoes or pasta, which are starchy and not exactly brothy, the chances for the dish sticking to the bottom is a lot more likely.

Fact: The best way to survive winter is with a warm beverage in hand at all times. But throwing a tea bag into a mug of boiling water or filling up a thermos with coffee doesn’t always cut it on the most biting cold days. Luckily, we have the slow cooker in these cases.

While classic French cuisine certainly doesn’t make use of a slow cooker, it’s no stranger to dairy. This is an ingredient the French know well; they’re masters of turning milk and cream into a whole world of rich foods. In fact, we can learn one of our most important tips about cooking dairy in the slow cooker from them. From dips and soups, to sauces and desserts, there are a lot of slow-cooker recipes that rely on dairy products.

In theory, with a little effort in the morning, a slow cooker greets you at the end of the day with a home-cooked, ready-to eat-meal (martini not included). Opening the door to the smell of lasagna, chicken soup, pot roast — to almost anything — is heaven. But most recipes call for three to six hours of cooking, so for those of us who are operating on more of an eight- to 10-hour schedule, that isn’t so convenient.

The slow cooker has been our answer for soups, stews, hands-off dinners, and even the occasional breakfast. But it doesn’t stop there — this handy appliance is also your ticket to satisfying your sweet tooth. From candies to confections, your slow cooker is also capable of making sweet treats.

Have a Dutch oven recipe you really love, but don’t feel like turning on the oven or stove? Get out your slow cooker! It takes a simple adjustment, but for most recipes these two pieces of cooking equipment can be used interchangeably. So many recipes that call for a Dutch oven, like soups, stews, and braises, all cook using the same principle as a slow cooker — low, slow cooking.

Q: I now have a slow cooker, which is too large for my needs, as I live alone. I wanted to ask if it would be OK to put a small casserole dish with the ingredients into the slow cooker, and then switch it on? Sent by Jeff Editor: The short answer is yes. As long as the dish is oven-safe, it can go into your slow cooker. Although by the time you scale down a recipe to fit into a dish small enough to fit in your slow cooker, you may find it easier to cook it in the slow cooker itself.

Come fall and I’m usually ready to eat my weight in butternut squash. Roasted, puréed, cubed into salads and pasta, baked into muffins and pastries — I just can’t get enough. But as much as I love butternut, I hate prepping it; peeling and cutting through this hard squash is cumbersome. Well, we can say goodbye to that dreaded prep, because this is the easiest way to cook butternut squash without any peeling or cutting.

I have been cooking meals in my slow cooker regularly for the past 18 years (and writing about it for the past seven!). It’s accurate to say that I love my slow cooker. Err, slow cookers; I currently have 14 in the house, and try to use a slow cooker for our main meal four to five times a week. I get emails every week with questions about slow-cooker cooking, and many of them are about using slow cookers safely. You have questions? I have answers!

Salmon can be a simple weeknight dinner, but it’s a fish that can also carry its weight as a fancy meal for a weekend date night or dinner party main course. It’s all about how you cook it (the ways are many!) and how you dress it up. Here are five essentials to help you confidently cook delicious salmon every time. Yes, you did indeed read that correctly, and trust me, we were all just as surprised as you are right now.

Q: I am hosting my take on the “polenta supper” and it just so happens to be my very first dinner party! I am a little nervous about being with my guests and having to stay in the kitchen, so I thought I could keep the polenta warm in the Crock-Pot, but then an hour before the dinner, plate everything and put it in the oven (covered) on low heat to keep warm … that way all I have to do is pull out the dish when we are ready.

Product: Instant Pot (Model: IP-DUO60) Price: $134.95 Overall Impression: Instant Pot is a seven-in-one multi-cooker that works as an electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, steamer, warmer, and sauté pan all in one. Living in New York City, with limited kitchen space, I’ve always shied away from single-use appliances, no matter how great they seem.

Q: Whenever I cook beans in my slow cooker, they come out perfectly cooked, but the broth is thin and watery — not the creamy, slightly glossy deliciousness that I prefer. I often end up dumping the beans in a pot when I get home and simmering for a while. This usually does the trick, but it also negates the “no cooking” part of using a slow cooker.

Q: I often make pulled pork in a slow cooker and always have a ton of cooking liquid left over. Do you have any suggestions for what I can do with it? Reduce into a sauce? Perhaps a BBQ sauce? Sent by Todd Editor: Readers, what do you do with the leftover liquid from making pulled pork? Do you have any advice for Todd?

When I first started using a slow cooker, I was delighted to prepare ingredients before I went to work so I could come home to a hot meal. Sometimes, however, there just isn’t time in my morning routine. Searing meat, cooking vegetables, and reducing liquids sometimes amounts to an hour of prep or more. Then I decided to start using my slow cooker the other way: overnight instead.