Recommend a crockpot

pickarooney

I'm thinking of getting a crockpot for making pulled pork and... just pulled pork really, for now. Prices in the shops here are insane so I'm searching on line.

I came across one from the UK. Amazon France seems to think it's worth twice that :mad:

Otherwise, for a similar price, but with extra delivery and a slightly smaller capacity, there's this one.

Has anyone got experience of buying slow cookers and knows what to look out for?

pickarooney

Also, any recipes that would convince a sceptical OH that this is a good investment (in terms of space more so than cash) are welcome!

Dizzyblonde

The one on Amazon came up at 24 Sterling when I clicked on it. It's a good size, especially if you're going to do things like pulled pork in it. Mine is that size.

If you search 'slow cooker' in this forum you'll fine literally tons of recipes.

The Hill Billy

Crockpot & recipes can be found using this search.

pickarooney

Excellent. I'm definitely buying one!

The Black Oil

We were given one of these as a Christmas present. Apparently, Harvey Norman were doing them for €20, so the buyer bought 4. I've used it 3 times, can't wait to try it again.

bogman

Argos Cookworks 3.5l 200w model (422/8709) €23.99, bought one recently as it had a rating of 4.7/5 and almost 200 reviews

Im converted, love it, made a mouthwatering shoulder of lamb stew yesterday, took the leftovers to work today, dont be critical, im only a novice



Tesco have an "Original Crockpot" for just under €25 and the specs look good too

pickarooney

Just got my crockpot (Morphy Richards 6.5L) after a couple of mess-ups with the order. Cooking my first load of pulled pork today.

Just as a matter of interest I'm trying to figure out how much it costs to run a slow cooker for 10 hours on low.

Morag

It's wonderful for porridge as well.

Dizzyblonde

pickarooney wrote: »

Just as a matter of interest I'm trying to figure out how much it costs to run a slow cooker for 10 hours on low.

I read that they use the same amount of power as a light bulb, don't know how true it is though. They certainly only use a tiny fraction of the amount an oven or hob would.

pickarooney

The day after I got my crockpot I dropped into the local supermarket to get a couple of things to make pork with and there, on special offer, was a 6-litre crockpot for 22 euros. I got my friend to buy himself one just so I wouldn't feel quite so annoyed.

I've used it about five times so far with mixed results. One thing I just can't manage is making any kind of a sauce. I always end up with a tonne of thin liquid in the pot which is a real shame. I've made two different types of ribs now and while they smell delicious when cooking, by the end instead of a lovely sticky sauce I just end up with them floating in a load of fatty water.

Dizzyblonde

With a crockpot you need to use a lot less liquid that you would normally. When i do pulled pork I put about a cupful of stock in with the meat and when it's finished cooking and I've pulled it I put it back in with the sauce for a while, after getting rid of whatever liquid was in there.

Even doing things like stews or curries etc, you have to use only half the amount you would in a conventional oven or pot.

pickarooney

Last night I used less than 100ml of liquid but ended up with over a litre. I was going to do my carbonades a la flamande in there this morning but decided to do it on the stove instead because I just couldn't see the thick gloopy sauce working out in the crockpot.

Dizzyblonde

You'll never get a thick sauce in a crockpot I'm afraid, because liquid doesn't evaporate the way it does in the oven or even a pot on the hob.

vibe666

it's the nature of the beast unfortunately.

the trick i find with a slow cooker is to not add any liquid to it (or very little) at all wherever possible and consider how 'juicy' your ingredients are to start with, as almost none of the food juices are evaporated when you cook with it, unlike with regular cooking where the temps are much higher and a lot of steam would escape.

the only thing you can do really if you want all the juices to end up as a nice thick sauce is to drain the juice after cooking and reduce it down and make a sauce from it then and add it back in.

rich.d.berry

I always cook my stock in the slow cooker for this very reason that the liquid doesn't evaporate. I only add enough water to cover the contents and it produces a beautiful clear stock with enough gelatine content to set when refrigerated. I normally leave the stock to cook on low overnight. I'd never leave a pot simmering overnight on the stove.

vibe666

good tip rich, never thought of that. and i do love a good stock!

Dizzyblonde

In never thought of using it for stock either, but I will now - thanks rich

annieoburns

I use slow cooker all the time, basic model from Argos I think. Go for bigger size. I do cassoroles with it and have enough to feed c 6 people so freeze portions. I thicken it at the end by reducing or adding a thickener. The extra liquid is all good stuff ... some comes from added veggies. I use it also to do hams and spiced beef and also porridge from whole oats. I make enough in one batch to last about a week. Porridge only needs about three hours so sometimes doing last thing at night so put it on a electric plug in timer. Occasionally have forgotten about it and on all night! no worries!!

pickarooney

Made a curry Saturday night - disaster. The meat was dried out and tough, blackened on the bottom even, after 6 hours on low. I'm not sure why everything seems to get messed up.

annieoburns

Did you have lid on all the time? It takes half an hour or so to redeem loss of steam etc from an opened lid. What did you use for liquid?

vibe666

pickarooney wrote: »

Made a curry Saturday night - disaster. The meat was dried out and tough, blackened on the bottom even, after 6 hours on low. I'm not sure why everything seems to get messed up.

not to sound funny, but did you use good quality fat free meat? if you did, that might be why it came out dry.

i always use the cheap stuff, make sure it's a cut that's got plenty of fat and sinew that all gets broken down in slow cooking and makes cheap chewy meat into nice, moist tender meat. a nice cheap piece of shoulder or something like that. if it's chicken, go for thighs or legs rather than breast meat. actually, if it's chicken, ALWAYS go for thigh meat regardless of what you plan on doing with it, you can't beat it imho.

pickarooney

annieoburns wrote: »

Did you have lid on all the time? It takes half an hour or so to redeem loss of steam etc from an opened lid. What did you use for liquid?

Yes. I put it in and went to bed. Woke up 6 hours later and it was pretty much ruined. I used a trace amount of vinegar and nothing else as I didn't want a watery mess like I'd had previously when using about a cup of liquid. Maybe there's a happy medium.

vibe666 wrote: »

not to sound funny, but did you use good quality fat free meat? if you did, that might be why it came out dry.

I used the same stuff I use for making any kind of stew or curry on the stove - boeuf bourguignon pieces like shin and collar.

annieoburns

But you must use decent amount of liquid!
Your main ingredients should be just covered.
I would usually manage with tin of tomatoes for a cassarole then extra liquid comes from onions/carrots etc.

Sorry yes you will have a lovely liquid at the end!! not to be scorned.... full of all flavours/juices of ingredients. You can reduce that down by simmering off or add some thickener even tomatoe puree might do at end. Or save to add to another meal or make soup basis.....

pickarooney

To be honest, I think it's not worth it for meats with sauces. The extra effort (and washing up) involved in thickening the sauce just negates the advantage of cooking it in the crockpot. It would need at two litres of liquid to cover a kilo of meat and I'd be hours stirring that to try get it to reduce.

annieoburns

Use more ingredients to fill up the crockpot.... I would make at least six meals from my 'brew up'. You will not need so much liquid then. A tin of tomatoes and bit of water to rinse out can might be all in my cassaroles. .My extra dinners get frozen and I am glad of extra liquid to cover meal for freezing. There are smaller crockpots. I also use it for doing hams and spiced beef, dont have to cover joint with liquid but nearly... bring to near boil in another pot and transfer.

Also you do not need to have temperature on 'high' all the time, just for first hour,(maybe less) then turn to low.

rich.d.berry

I often do a silverside in my slow cooker. I only half cover the meat after adding 4 medium onions, peeled and left whole, to further reduce the volume of the liquid required. I turn the meat after an hour or so. The remaining stock reduces really quickly in my frying pan and a bit of corn starch will thicken it further to make a lovely gravy.

pickarooney

I'm about ready to bin this thing after the latest fiasco.

I thought I was safe enough with a cousous - chicken thighs, lamb ribs and a truckload of veggies. After eight hours it smelled great, looked delicious but is pretty much inedible. The meat all tastes like it's been swimming around in its own fat for half a day - which, of course, it has, the onions still aren't cooked, the chicken has dissolved and the carrots are firm and tasteless, apart from the all-pervasive flavour of grease. That was supposed to be three days' worth of food and I'm so annoyed I didn't just do it in the pressure cooker and have it all ready in an hour and a half with the same amount of work.

vibe666

are you following recipes or just throwing stuff in and hoping for the best?

if it's the latter and things aren't coming out how you are expecting them to, maybe you could try and follow a few tried and tested recipes so you know you can get good results out of it?

it's a very different style of cooking to what most people would be used to and not everything will work.

pickarooney

I've done a mixture of both. The two that have worked well so far have been textbook pulled pork and beef rib recipes. Ones that haven't were pork ribs from a reliable crockpot recipe source (slightly modified for the sauce), a beef curry that I've been making in the pan for years and this couscous which is a 60 year old recipe that has never gone wrong on the stove or the pressure cooker.

I'm going to try an Eisbein with lentils later this week and maybe one or two things from the thread on here. I just wish I could get my head around what's going wrong.

pickarooney

Well, I spoke too soon about the couscous... after leaving it in the fridge for 24 hours and reheating it, it was actually delicious.

Dizzyblonde

pickarooney wrote: »

I just wish I could get my head around what's going wrong.

I'm no expert but I've been cooking for my family for decades, and in my opinion it's to do with the fact that there's no evaporation of liquid in a slow cooker. When you cook by other methods the sauce/gravy reduces and so the flavours become more intense, but in the slow cooker the opposite seems to happen. You end up with a lot more liquid and the flavours are diluted.

I love my slow cooker but I wouldn't use it for everything.

Kev.

To get a nice thick sauce you need to add a cup of cornflour mixed with hot water,

This will thicken it up nicely without ruining the taste

vibe666

a cup?

i assume you mean a couple of teaspoons of cornflour in a cup mixed with hot water. a cup of cornflour would turn your food into a big solid block! :eek:

i find the easiest way with a slow cooker to avoid watery sauce is to just not put any liquid in at all if possible. you'll find that the food you put in has plenty enough liquid in it already that will come out as you are cooking.

if you are worried about it all drying out, just keep an eye on it with a cup of water handy nearby, but i'd bet that in most cases, you won't even need it and the food will come out just fine as is.

pickarooney

vibe666 wrote: »

a cup?

i assume you mean a couple of teaspoons of cornflour in a cup mixed with hot water. a cup of cornflour would turn your food into a big solid block! :eek:

i find the easiest way with a slow cooker to avoid watery sauce is to just not put any liquid in at all if possible. you'll find that the food you put in has plenty enough liquid in it already that will come out as you are cooking.

if you are worried about it all drying out, just keep an eye on it with a cup of water handy nearby, but i'd bet that in most cases, you won't even need it and the food will come out just fine as is.

I thought that until I tried to make a curry As for keeping an eye on it - no point slow cooking if you have to be there to watch it.

Actually, rather than me moaning - does anyone have a good recipe for beef curry in a crockpot that yields a moist, flavoursome meal with a thick sauce?

vibe666

no, but i'm going to be prepping a beef stew and dumplings tonight to cook tomorrow, so wish me luck.

dxhound2005

This might be a bit off topic and maybe someone has posted about it before. But there was a 2 page article in the Times (of London) today which I can't find online about something called the Wonderbag. I hadn't heard of it before but it seems to be a new version of an old idea for slow cooking. I might get one just for the novelty value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderbag

vibe666

finally got around to making it.

didn't put any liquid in at all to start with, dusted the beef in cornflour and browned it off in the pan before adding on top of the veg. it just needed a cup of water towards the end so the dumplings got properly stewed.

I left it in the slow cooker for 24 hours on the 'warm' setting and just added the dumplings for the last 2 hours and turned it up to high to let them cook out properly.

no spuds in it, just root veg and stuff. we steamed some baby new potatoes and lightly crushed them in the bottom of the bowls before we added the stew.



VERY tasty.

pickarooney

Does anyone know where to get a crockpot online, deliverable to an Irish address?

Dizzyblonde

Power City have some and they deliver. You have to search under 'slow cooker'.

The Kitchen Dresser have some too but they're very expensive.

pickarooney

Brilliant, thanks