I usually do that with roasts or when I use the slow cooker to make Italian Beef sandwiches. I just brown it as I normally would, deglaze the pan, and add all the subsequent liquid and drippings to the cooker.

I've never cooked lamb in a slow cooker--not much expertise with lamb in general, I'll admit ... but everything else could work out fine. I've done ribs in the slow cooker by simply covering them in barbecue sauce (homemade or not, whatever) and letting them cook for 6-8 hours. (They're good just from the slow cooker, but if you want a bit more carmelization you can throw them under the broiler for four or five minutes after they're done in the crock pot.)

Another tip: I've heard that it helps to blanch or saute vegetables before cooking, because that alleviates some of the nutrient loss from the extended time exposed to heat.

Good luck!

I think you can cook any of the food you listed in your cooker.

I like to cook pork chops in my slow cooker. Here's how I do it:

Chop up a bunch of vegetables into not small pieces (it's gonna cook a long time). I use carrot, celery, onion, red pepper, and garlic. Salt and pepper pork chops. Into slow cooker, pour one can diced tomatoes and one half can chicken broth. Turn cooker on high. Sear pork chops in skillet on stove top til browned both sides. Add pork chops to slow cooker. Return skillet to heat and add 2 tablespoon olive oil. Saute sliced vegetables for a couple of minutes, then add to cooker. Pour remaining half can of chicken broth into skillet to deglaze, and then add to slow cooker. Cook 4 hours on high, or 6 hours on low. Serve over rice or with mashed potatoes.

and I thank you for giving me the right word for scraping up the brown stuff and dumping it into the pot -

Everyone absorb this word - "deglazing" - I like it better than my crude cooking terms...

I looked up Hamilton Beach and they have some lamb there - CrockPot has almost none - and will try google too.

I am still debating on how to cook by spare ribs - after the crock pot makes sense, but browning them before makes sense too. I'll do whatever is easier on my nerves when I get to that point.

Thank you a whole bunch ...... even for the word "deglazing." Use it 3 times and you own it. I like the word "deglazing." Now I own it too...

the brown stuff in the bottom of the pan is "fond". That's the stuff you deglaze.

and have supper ready when you are.

Basically, it goes veggies on the bottom, meat on top of them, and not too much liquid because it doesn't tend to exit the pot. That means it holds its flavor better than other methods and searing isn't always necessary.

Meat and veg are good. Beans are good. Posole works. Grains like rice don't work because by the time the inside is cooked, the outside is mush. Not successful.

I just got to your post and see "not too much liquid." I already screwed up. My memory has it stored that liquid disappears when you cook, but maybe not so much with the low heat.

When nobody's looking, I might open the lid and take a ladleful or 2 out.

When you say "searing isn't always necessary," do you mean that it's possible for food to get some browning-color in the cooking process?

I'm getting anxious to try so many things that we are all going to get fat and eat our way to an already overdue death...or maybe to the poor house cause meat is so damned expensive...

Thanks for your post....

instead of escaping in the steam. Chicken and turkey parts need no browning, really.

Mix your meat with veg and you won't get too fat to get through the door. I can't do anything about the poorhouse except tell you to ladle your stew over rice or noodles to stretch it out over a few days instead of cleaning out the crock pot in one sitting. Wet cooking is especially good for grass fed beef and your arteries will thank you even if your wallet doesn't.

I especially like things like a turkey thigh or two cooked with salsa verde (or just tomatillos and chiles) and shredded to use in tacos, burritos and tamales.

They might work on the "high" setting, but not the normal setting and probably not on high either. Beef short ribs need to cook at about 325-350 degrees, as does beef pot roast. Chicken works wonderfully well in the crockpot.

I do pulled pork in it that is a major hit with my family. Use pork shoulder. Put a medium chopped onion in the bottom of the pot. Take half a cup of good olive oil, add plenty of crushed garlic and a teaspoon of dried Oregano. Apply that mixture all over the pork shoulder and put it in the crock pot. Cook on low for 12 hours.

Take it out and shred the meat with two forks. Stir a little of the juices back in along with a bit of your favorite barbeque sauce.

cooking entire roasts in our crock pot, as long as you let em go for 6-8 hours.

My experience has simply been a lack of flavor and texture. Beef seems to me to need the higher heat.

With the right additional ingredients a reasonable flavor can be achieved, but with times ranging from six hours up to as much as twelve, the beef comes out stringy and chewy.

I do a pot roast with brown sugar, cloves and beer. At 325 in the oven for 3-1/2 hours it is awesome. In the crock pot for 6 hours, or 8 hours, it is inedible.

To add flavor to the cooking liquid. Red for beef, white for chicken. Beer for strongly flavored dishes like chili. Water doesn't add flavor.

Cut the meat into slices or small pieces. More surface area to flavor with the cooking liquid, and shorter 'strings'.

The long, low cooking of a crock pot is perfect for the tough, 'cheaper' cuts of meat. The tough meat is from muscle that was worked a lot more while the critter was alive. Therefore it has a lot of connective tissue, this means more flavor. (think thighs vs breast on chicken).

Respect the critter that died for your meal. Use as much of it as possible, and make as good a meal from it as you can. The same is true for the vegetables. I've seen more care given to them in a steakhouse than in a vegan establishment. That carrot died for you: treat it right.

But if you make a mistake, learn from it. Don't be afraid to experiment: who knows where the path not taken leads?

I have a lot of barbecue sauce recipes, but if someone has a real good one, I could use that too.

About the chicken - if I get a whole chicken, make some stuffing, put the chicken in the pot, stuffed, with some stuffing on the side - would that work?

Would the chicken stay pasty white or should I roll it around in butter till it gets color? Will the stuffing fall apart?

I guess that knowing when meats in general are done means jabbing it with fork and trying it.

You folks have me less fearful. If what I'm cooking is a bust, I will not take the pot back, but will try It again.

Thank you much.

Chicken is better cut up, although you definitely can cook it whole. It will be very tender and juicy. Not stuffed, though.

Definitely get a crockpot recipe book. After following a few of the recipes you'll get the feel for it and will be able to ad lib with comfort.

I have been using a crockpot since the 1970's, went through quite a few over the years. Great for meats, chili, soups and stews and cooking dry beans. Great for making cajeta from condensed milk too (fill pot with water, enough to cover can, place unopened can of condensed milk in pot, cook on high about 2 hours, then using tongs, turn can over and cook about another 45 minutes. Remove can from water, let cool, you will have a can of wonderful caramel milk filling, so good in crepes, on cakes and just eat with fresh apple slices. Time will vary for the cooking, depending on how hot your crock pot gets.

Here is an easy recipe for smothered pork chops. Place pork chops (4 to 6) in crock pot, add can of cream of mushroom soup, do not add liquid, if you must only add about 1/4 cup. Season with some shakes of Worcestershire sauce and black pepper. Let cook until pork chops are done and meat is fork ready and the mushroom sauce has turned brown. Serve with some rice. So easy and so tasty.

You mean that it gets the caramel color without adding any coloring? I have to try that.

The pork chops sounds even easy enough for me. Will try that too.

Thank you.

The sugar they put into the condensed milk caramelizes so what you get is a very thick, rich caramel sauce. It was great on ice cream, especially.

I never knew it had a name, only that a freak I knew in the late 60s had discovered it by accident and passed it along to every other freak he knew, me included.

My own sweetened condensed milk more often becomes coconut macaroons these days.

and very young in all other regards, maybe you can tell me how you do turkey in a crockpot...
Just the breast, browning, etc?

(I'm an old hand, period)

Thanks..

There are a few things you will still want to use the stove top and oven for. Golden brown turkey breast and golden brown baked chicken are two of them.

Cheap, tough cuts of beef and the crock pot were made for each other.

Turkey would be better roasted in the oven. Crockpot cooking works well on meats and dishes that require long slow cooking. Perfect for chuck roast, all kinds of soups and dry beans. If I need some cooked chicken, I will put a whole chicken in the crock pot along with a little onion and celery and a chicken bullion cube and cook till done. Have plenty of meat to make chicken salad or other dishes. Same for beef, if I want meat for enchiladas or tacos, I will cook it first in the crock pot until tender. The Mexican cold meat salad, Salpicon, is great using the crockpot beef for the salad. Salpicon is a great buffet dish. Shred the cooked meat with a fork, add cold cooked potatoes, chopped onion and an oil and vinegar dressing. Chill for several hours. Before serving, garnish with tomato wedges and avocado slices and radish and pickled jalapeno slices. Serve with tortilla chips or thin sliced French bread.

The caramelized milk is called cajeta, this is a favorite Mexican candy treat and it was once served in little boxes, hence its name. It is sold in the Mexican food section, made of goats' milk and in cans made of cows' milk.

I think it renders off fat that I don't need in my food.

If you are scared to use it, try making soup! Even a Costco cooked chicken makes delish chicken soup. I take the skin off then throw in some carrots, onion and celery along with some Better than Bouillion. You can't go wrong.

or Beef Stew. I love my crock pot. Start dinners in the morning and have it all ready for supper.

Google crock pot recipes, there's a bunch of things one can make in a crock pot. Bet you will be glad to have one, especially in colder weather months, once you get use to it. Keep us updated.

Fancy seeing you here.

I have some beef stew in the pot cooking now. Am sitting on pins and needles till 5...

I browned the meat coated with flour, the flour fell off and browned, I put the meat on top of the vegies in the pot, then cleaned the frying pan with a can of beef broth and threw all that brown crumby liquid in the crock pot. They said to use a cup, but I used a whole can.

If I had any I would be chewing my finger nails....

Luv

I bought some stew meat the other day and plan on making some myself. We're having a mini heat wave here so I'll probably wait a little while (I froze the meat). We usually have either French or Italian bread with it, you?

Enjoy.

The stew will be thin, so thicken it with buerre manié, cornstarch in cold water, a crustless slice of caraway rye bread or two. I always think it's better to have more gravy with the stew since I serve it over starches to make it last.

Buerre manié (burr manYAY is close enough) is just equal amounts butter and flour, kneaded together until you can't see flour any more. Just pick out lumps of it and stick into a watery gravy, soup or stew until it thickens. Cook on high for 5 minutes to cook out the raw flour flavor and you're set.

used imaginary butter and flour and kneaded it together since I read your post - every day.

I wonder what to do the imaginary lumps.

Sincerely, thank you for this suggestion.

Burr mainy sounds cool too. I'll have to deglaze something before I add more liquid and add the burr mainy.

I love all you guys....

With the flour grains completely surrounded by fat, they all just melt right into the sauce. You cook the thickened sauce for 5 minutes to remove any raw flour taste, not to remove lumps.

Oh, do I add the butter-flour lumps to cold or hot liquid?

I always add some of the hot to the cold, then blend all in when warm. But sometimes, I add cold water to flour/fat in the pan, to break down the flour/fat smoothly.

Which?

and wait for each lump to cook down as you stir so you'll know how thick it's getting.

Just use real butter, not margarine. Real butter adds flavor to the gravy and margarine just adds the wrong kind of grease.

To all of you. I'll be looking at this more and more. Elections, raking, all kinds of stuff happening, and the crockpot has been cold for 3 days at least.....

Just looking at your comments makes me feel guilty. Instead of sitting at the computer I should be chopping celery.

Actually you can probably find one in the checkout line at the grocery store.

If you like barbecue pork, just salt and pepper a pork loin, add garlic or garlic salt if you want, maybe a half cup of chicken broth and put the crockpot on the low setting. 8 or 10 hours later you'll have tender, pull-apart pork that you can then pour your favorite barbecue sauce over and it's wonderful.

Anything you want to brown, you must brown before, because you can't brown after everything's fully cooked.

Once you've used it a couple of times you will love it. It is just so lovely and amazing to put the food in, turn it on, walk away, and come back hours later to a completely cooked meal. Plus, all those hours your house will smell wonderful.

In your first paragraph, you mentioned a pork loin and 1/2 cup broth...I used a lot more in my stew, maybe 2 cups. Did I screw up or will it be okay?

I didn't use potatoes because I might make dumplings and don't know when to add them?!

Thanks for your reply!

Or only a very little.

Recently I passed a crockpot pork chop recipe to a friend:
Four boneless pork chops
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 package dry ranch dressing.
Put the pork chops in the bottom of the crockpot. Open can of soup and pour over. Open envelope of dressing and sprinkle over that. Cook on high 4 hours, low 8 hours.

My friend, even though I've sent him lots of recipes in the past, decided he needed to add a can of water to the soup. He wound up with pork chop soup.

Just look at a few recipes. If you're making soup, you'll need to add some water or broth. If stew or anything else, you almost never need to add extra liquid.

I'm not sure I'd even try to make dumplings in a crockpot. When I make my chicken stew, which is a top of the stove thing for me, I always make dumplings, using the recipe on the Bisquick box. That calls for cooking them 10 minutes with the pot of stew uncovered, ten minutes covered. The problem is that a crockpot is at a sufficiently lower heat, the stew in question won't be hot enough with it uncovered, although it might possibly be once you cover it back up. My suggestion would be to add the potatoes about halfway through the cooking time, and make dumplings or simple biscuits separately.

Till my husband runs away from home.

Family loves dumplings, he doesn't like them, so I could them separately anyway

I may be having beef stew soup today. But I didn't use potatoes, just carrots, onion and celery. I intended to cook some really good noodles and serve it that way if I didn't make dumplings.......or maybe mashed potatoes. Depends on how it looks at 5 pm and the level of frustration I have with the whole project.

Your friends pork chop soup had possibilities....pour off liquid and use it for rice (on stove).

Thank you, Sheila.

The more I read the more confused I get. You ever notice that every recipe you want to make has at least one ingredient that you don't have, never had, and don't know what it tastes like?

My experience. After going thru the 6 books & online ones too, I lost track of the ones I wanted to make and after to do a re-search again.

Made a disasterous fish recipe that was in the Crock-Pot instructions. It called for 2 lbs fish (white type) and 2-3 lemons, and cook on low for 40 minutes. It turned out barely warm, couldn't pick it up without it smushing all over the place, and called for no butter (a favorite ingredient in baked fish). At my grocery store they wanted $1 per lemon, so I used two, not 3.

We ended up washing the busted fillet so I could give them to the dog. She liked 'em.

My advice, not knowing anything about your cooking style or habits, is going to be to stick to the kinds of things you already make in conventional ways, at least at first.

As with any kind of cooking, over time you'll get more comfortable.

Do you make bread? If you don't, please do not feel you need to start baking since I'm just using it as an example. I bake bread, and since I do so, I have a feel for it. Didn't have it at first. Fortunately, the first recipe I ever tried was very forgiving.

Back to the crockpot. This is not a place to try what for you are new and exotic recipes, at least not at the very beginning.

Oh, and I can't imagine a crockpot recipe that calls for cooking for only 40 minutes, whether on low or on high. Every single crockpot recipe I know calls for a minimum of 4-6 hours, and I don't think I've ever seen 4 hours.

In a lot less than forty minutes you could grill or pan fry a piece of fish, maybe even bake it in that amount of time.

As for ingredients you don't have, don't worry too much. If it's a spice, you might want to go ahead and buy it. You may find that you'll use it in the future. Some things can be left out, or something else substituted. I'm one of those for whom cilantro tastes like soap, so I simply ignore it if it shows up in a recipe.

If you want, PM me. I am no expert in crockpots, but I do enjoy cooking, and I like to think there are some things I do well.

and kneading in the last 2 years. I can still do a pie, but not as beautiful as I used to....same with cutting dough squares, hands not as good and tire easily....but I do it anyway, sloppy.

I like to lay fish out in a large glass dish, put a little lemon on it, parsley, butter (if it gets too wet the first 5 mintes or so, scoop out some of the water and add butter then...) no more than 20 minutes at about 400 d.

What's a good chili recipe? Do you brown the meat or throw it in raw? I can't get comfortable with the idea of throwing raw meat into the pot with beans...beans cook fast, meat not so fast. Onions would stay firm. I don't like crockpot so far, even tho my beef tips were good, creamed chicken was good, and stuffed peppers. I think my family is yearning for batter-fried tenders and Arby's fries....

I may take you up on your pm offer, thanks.

Edit: that fish recipe is on the leaflet that Crock-Pot packs with the pot. Same recipe appears on their website somewhere...

if for no other reason than I'd want to drain off all the grease and water generated by ground beef.

Haven't made chili in a long time, but as I recall, it went more or less like this as a stovetop dish: A pound of ground beef, browned. One medium onion chopped and stirred in, likewise a bell pepper. A can of chopped tomatoes, a package of Williams chili seasoning, some hot pepper, and maybe some thyme, celery seed, marjoram, and cumin. A can each of pinto beans, kidney beans, and some other beans, probably white ones. Stir it all together and simmer for a while until the flavors develop.

Chili is something that is so quick to put together, I see no need for doing it in a crockpot.

When I finally started making chili when my sons were about half grown, it was one of their absolute favorite meals.

What a crockpot is best for is things like soups, stews, pot roast, the things that generally take several hours to make properly. They make no sense, in my opinion, for the very many things that are quite quick to make.

Oh, if you like pulled pork, just buy a pork loin, salt and pepper it, make sure it's a room temperature when you put it in the crockpot. Eight to ten hours later it will be incredibly tender. Just pull apart, put your favorite barbecue sauce on, and you've got it. Open a can of beans, make some coleslaw, and it's dinner.

Packaged onion soup adds the color and umami that browning gives. A hunk of any beef plus onion soup on low yields something really yummy after a few hours. There are only a few foods that I like cooked in a slow cooker--food tends to come out too mushy and bland--but beef always seems to turn out well. I also use the slow cooker to cook dried beans--no soaking required.

I tend to use the slow cooker more for keeping things warm. For instance, if we're having people over for a ball game, I'll make chili or stew and put it into the slow cooker on warm, so people can serve themselves whenever.

when something was cooked on or in the stove....

I wonder if it would work with breaded chicken or fish . .

Thank you for the idea.

Don't put cold food into the slow cooker and then set it on warm--that's an invitation to food poisoning. Heat the food first and use the cooker to keep it warm.

want to put anything breaded in it, as it will get soggy.

This is one of my husband's favorite.

http://www.food.com/recipe/crock-pot-hot-fudge-sundae-cake-41657

I have never done it but apparently you can wrap them in foil and throw them in the cooker with no liquid!

to the crockpot.

It's just what I prefer to do and it really doesn't take that much longer. The resulting gravy is always quite dark and very flavorful.

I'd be lost without my crockpot!

Book

From My Kitchen To Yours (Slow Cooker Recipes From Dinner To Dessert) by Sara Winlet