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 I use it year-round, for all meals. Breakfast, cinnamon rolls are great. – Harp77 When the weather is very hot I will sometimes use it to make granola, because we count on having homemade in the house.

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.

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.

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!

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?

If you’re trying to adapt a regular soup recipe to your slow cooker or improve one you’ve already made, here are a few slow-cooking tips to help you make the best soup ever.1. Ingredients to Add at the Beginning Some ingredients stand up to, and benefit from, longer cooking times more than others. All of these can be added at the very start of cooking.

After reading Emma’s Ultimate Cheater Pulled Pork recipe last week, I was craving homemade pulled pork, but was saddened by the fact that, without a slow cooker, it seemed beyond my reach. I did some digging, however, and learned that there are some easy workarounds for this dilemma, and that my days of being stymied by slow cooker recipes are behind me.