The Slow Cooker also known as a crock-pot (which is technically different) is an excellent and efficient way to make a week’s worth of meals out of one ‘slow’ process. You can put your meat, vegetables, and spices into the slow cooker, walk away, and come back to healthy and savory-smelling goodness.
Slow Cooker Basics
Slow cookers are as names, the food is cooked at low temperatures for longer time frames than typical.
Budget food shoppers also like the slow cooker because the slower process accommodates less costly meat by providing drawn-out tenderizing. Some also believe nutrients are preserved through slow cooking.
But the main attraction remains the preservation of cooking time. When using a slow cooker, all your food can go in – one time, and does not require any ongoing attention. You can add your meat, for example, a pot roast or turkey legs. Add the chopped, or even whole vegetables you want. Add your spices. Set the timer and walk away.
For busy entrepreneurs, this means having a healthy meal ready later in the day, and enough to go in the freezer for next few weeks. The only question to decide is what do you want to cook?
Slow Cooker Meal Ideas
We have scoured around for meal suggestions that meet our criteria for efficiency. Meals that are all-in, providing a mix of food varieties so that we can ensure nutrition and health, foods that blend well together to preserve flavor, and foods that freeze well for long-term storage.
The Food Network has a great list of 75 recipes for the slow cooker, but we do not recommend them all. We only want ideas where you can cook the entire meal in the cooker. The challenge for busy entrepreneurs is that not all slow cooker meals are suitable for storing and freezing.
We recommend meats – beef, sausage, chicken, turkey – and ‘hard’ not watery vegetables.
For the starches, we prefer to cook the non-veggie carbs separately. If you typically serve meat with rice, pasta, noodles, or polenta, you want to make sure those foods are also easy to freeze or have cooking options that are ‘instant.’ Only rice and potatoes fit these requirements.
Pasta typically does not work well in the cooker because it can become to mushy. Since all foods can be frozen, you can cook a big batch of pasta to have with your slow cooker meat or veggies, and freeze the balance for other meals.
Remember to let the pasta defrost a day or two ahead of your meal since the pieces sticking together tend to break apart when still frozen.
Also remember you are going to be heating the meal in the microwave. Some foods like tail-on shrimp tend to dry out and shrink the more often you microwave. You may want to avoid items like shrimp in your cooker.
Use the meal ideas to give you an idea of the types of options that are available.
Meal Ideas
For example,
Chicken Thighs (or wings or drumsticks)
Turkey (or beef or veggie) chili
Types of Slow Cookers
Slow cookers come in all variety of shapes and sizes. A 6-quart capacity works for about 6-lbs chicken. You also want to be able to put the ‘crock’ part and the lid in the dishwasher (most are safe).
My first crock-pot had a glass lid that smashed into several gazillion pieces when it slid off the dish rack into the sink (not fun). So be careful about how you handle the pieces since it is difficult to replace just one part.
Featured add-ons like a temperature probe are too fussy for us since the idea is to walk away and come back when the food is done, but if you are concerned about food temperature you would probably like that feature, and can schedule time when you check back on your meal.
Some options for those who are looking:
These three below show the variety of slow cooker shapes, but the basic features are usually the same. If you are looking, your selection may be based on price, add-ons or size.
You can click a picture for more information at the product page (affiliate links to Amazon.com)
