Cooking Tips: How To Make The Most Out Of Your Slow Cooker

Got yourself a brand new slow-cooker? Here’s how you work around it!

Slow cookers are one of the most useful kitchen tools you can invest in. They come cheap and are capable of instilling great flavour into your dish with the simplest of ingredients. From curries to stews and to even desserts, you can almost cook up everything in a slow cooker. However, the process of slow cooking takes a lot of time and patience. You need to let the cooker work its magic on the ingredients and for that you need to know the best ways of using it. Here are a few tips on how you can get the most out of your slow cooker for making amazing dishes!

Preheat Your Slow Cooker For The Best Results

Many people don’t follow this step. They shove the ingredients all together in the slow cooker and start the cooker only after that. However, preheating your slow cooker would make a lot of difference to your dish. Make sure to switch it on at least twenty minutes before you plan to put the ingredients in. While your slow cooker is preheating, assemble your ingredients that need to go into the cooker. Doing this step would ensure your ingredients cook perfectly and evenly. This step would also make the slow cooking time faster if you are particularly in a hurry to put out the meal on the table.

Don’t Fill The Slow Cooker To The Brim

People make this mistake all the time! You don’t need to fill the cooker with the sauce or water up to the brim. In fact, when you do this, halfway through the cook, the lid will start rattling because the content inside the cooker that’s filled to the crock starts bubbling. Some of the water may even spill out. This could turn your ingredients dry and that doesn’t taste very good. To avoid turning your food into a chewy mess, fill the slow cooker up to three quarters of the capacity and you will be sorted.

Don’t Peek Inside To See How Far Along Your Dish Is

Slow cooking takes time. Deal with it! Don’t open the lid and peek inside to find out how much of the cooking process is completed. When you do that, the heat inside the cooker escapes and that would only mean that your dish will take even longer to cook!