my first slow cooker....

[sudsmaster]

Well, I came home to a mouth watering aroma in the patio kitchen - which had wafted out to the outer patio.

The result: Chicken was fall-off-the bone tender. Potatoes done just right. Celery? Well, ok if you like soggy veggies, lol.

The garlic was a bit of a disappointment, though. It had overcooked to the point of getting a bit bitter. I've steamed whole garlic cloves before and they are delicious - actually, sweet. This was not quite the same. OK if you like strong overcooked garlic, not my favorite. Steaming them only takes about 10 minutes, after all.

The reason may be that the total cooking time was 10 hours, on low, including about 1 hour of warm-up on high. Next time I'll omit the warm-up on high and just cook it all on low for the 9 hours or so it takes me to leave home for work and get back after an 8.5 hour day. I'll probably also reduce the garlic amount and add in some other good stew veggies, like carrots, turnips, cabbage, or more potatoes and onions.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, since dinner I've been burping up bad garlic breath ... lol ... I'm coming to the conclusion that this particular slow cooking exercise has mostly inedible results. The aroma was wonderful, however.

Seems to me I recall not being overly impressed with the results 10 years ago, either. Which is why the thing went to the back of the cupboard after a few attempts.

I might try again... maybe in the winter...

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

Thanks for all the info guys! I've made curried chicken and rice, cinnamon apples, and bbqed beef tips so far. I just bought a roast and there are boiled peanuts going as we speak. It will be so much nicer than making them on the stove and having to constantly add water and salt!

The glass is etched a bit so each time I make something, it stains, but I don't care. It was free and works great so I'm happy with it. I do think a regular stoneware would hold the heat in better than the milk glass (which is tapered and gets smaller at the bottom... odd shape and also no handles so hard to grip).

I'm having fun though!

)

 

[sudsmaster]

Visited Target this evening and reviewed all the small appliances (and they are stocking a 1.5 cu ft top loading Haier washing machine, too!).

What caught my eye was a Hamilton Beach digital crockpot, with a temperature probe. You can tell it what temp you want the meat to get to, and then it will switch automatically over to warm once that temp is reached. Seems to me this would be perfect for slow cooking a whole chicken... especially if one can't be around to shut the thing off after six hours or so.

However I wasn't real impressed with the quality on the other digital crockpots there (albeit Rival brand). So I'm not sure how durable the HB unit would be.

 

[rayjay]

Hi Yogi. I am with you. I have three crock pots. The latest one is the Kitchenaid 7 1/2 quart model. It is really great! It has an autocook, which if you are in a hurry, starts out fast and then switches to low.

Check the Kitchenaid out, lots of nice features, also the All Clad one.

I also have 6 pressure cookers, coffee pots, a couple of buffet warmers too. Way too many appliances and gadgets to mention here. lol

 

[rayjay]

Quick Recipe

Take a boneless pork roast (tenderloin) place in crock pot, add 1 bottle of Jack Daniels barbecue sauce (or any brand for that matter) add a little more water, (rinse the bottle) cover and cook for 8 hours. Then shred the pork and put back in the pot. Serve with soft rolls. Great pulled pork sandwiches.

 

[steve1-18]

Recipes - chocolate cheese cake

Bob [APPNUT] has a recipe for a chocolate cheese cake that you 'bake' in a crock pot. It was delicious! I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned it!

 

[appnut]

I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned it!

Steve, actually, the last crockpot thread, Luigi included the recipe, but I don't think he remembered where it came form.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, I caved today and got the 6 qt electronic stainless Crockpot at Costco. It comes with the "Little Dipper", which I could do without, but what the heck. The main thing is it has a timer: 4 and 6 hours on high, and 8 and 10 hours on low, and then it switches automatically to warm. I'm gonna try another chicken tomorrow - not the ghastly 40 cloves of garlic one, but more like traditional potatoes, onions, and carrots. Will probably throw in some sage, rosemary, etc from the garden as well, in the cavity, and maybe a bit of minced garlic.

If it's not much better than the older crockpot, I'll take it back and try one of the fancier ones - with greater timing selection - maybe even the HB with a temp probe at Target.

 

[58limited]

I have my mom's 6 qt. Sears crock pot from the early 1970s (that is as far back as I can remember, it might be older) and it works great. In the mid-1990s I bought a new Hamilton-Beach crock pot (looks identical to the Sears pot but with a different color and pattern on the outside). Customer service had to replace it twice: one of the heating elements broke - 2 times! The third one is still working, but I haven't bought a new one since. I just don't trust modern craftsmanship. If I need another, I'll find an older unit.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, I unpacked the new 6 qt Crock-Pot and filled it up with a 4.5 lb chicken and veggies this morning. I was a bit surprised - the capacity doesn't seem to be that much more than my old 4.5 qt unit. That's in large part because the lid on the new one is relatively flat, whereas the lid on the old one is highly domed. The high dome allows one to put more veggies under the chicken and still not have the chicken touch the lid. But there is more room on the sides of the crock so that's where I wound up putting the extra veggies.

The recipe is my own, a modification of the old crock pot's booklet recipe. I'm calling it Southwest Chicken... or something like that. Stuffed the inside of the chicken with about six minced hot serrano peppers from the garden, along with sprigs of sage, cilantro, oregano, and sweet marjoram. The veggie mix under and around the chicken included sliced young red potatoes, sliced sweet red onion, six sliced garlic cloves, and a handful of sliced carrots. The slices are more like bite size chunks. After all that was added, on top I put some chunks of fresh beefsteak tomatoes. I figure the acid of the tomatoes will help the potatoes from discoloring and add some bacteriostatic effect while everything is warming up.

I set the control for 8 hours on low.

Here's a shot of the Crockpot Bobload:

 

[sudsmaster]

Again, after about four hours, delicious aromas are filling the patio and house. Flies are massing on the window screens trying to get at the slow cooker, lol.

Been reading some reviews of the Hamilton Beach "Set and Forget" slow cooker with temperature probe. Most people love the way it cooks, esp with the probe, but reliability has been a big issue. Some report their cookers have failed to heat at all after only two uses. Another couple of buyers say the crock cracked while washing it, and that HB has been unresponsive in how to get a replacement crock. Others say the digital control panel has failed after a few uses. Some say that the cooker turned itself to high mysteriously overnight, resulting in burned and ruined food. Or that it didn't heat at all.

So it sounds like a very good concept, but limited by poor quality/manufacturing. If I do get one, you can be sure I'll be saving the receipt, box, and all documentation.

 

[foraloysius]

Nice crockpot Rich!!

Bob, you are mistaken. I posted a recipe of an Amaretto cheesecake. Would you post your chocolate cheesecake recipe?

 

[appnut]

Luigi, it was teh same basic recipe, I just substituted cocoa powder or melted 1 oz chocolate squares and increased sugar a bit. I'll see what I can find, but Ithink I just made it up as an adaptation.

 

[sudsmaster]

Hmmm. We'll see how well this one turns out.

I thought I was overfilling it. But after five hours, on low, with no preheat, the thing has created liquid from the veggies (onions and tomatoes) and it's boiling around the sides!
Thanks, Louis.

I hopped online to read reviews of the unit and lots of people complained about it cooking too fast. Which wouldn't be a problem IF the times were more adjustable. But all you get is 8 or ten hours on low, or 4 or 6 hours on high. It seems like this thing will be done cooking in 6 hours on low... but since I'm evaluating its usefulness as an away-at-work solution, I'm going to let it run the full 8 hours and see what the temp of the chicken is and how it tastes.

I know my older 4.5 qt crockpot didn't boil on low. It did overcook the chicken last time, but that was probably because I put it on high for 1 hour and then swtiched it to low, and then didn't get home to shut if off until 10 hours had elapsed. And the main problem was the garlic cloves overheating and scorching and tasting rather bitter.

We'll see what these results are. I can always return it to Costco and try a different brand. Or put the older crockpot on a timer and try it that way - although it's rather small for the chicken/veggie dishes I want to make (hard to find chickens at Costco that are less than five lbs these days).

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, I had to call the experiment to a halt at six hours. When I saw the skin of the chicken start to inflate like a balloon I realized things had gone long enough - maybe too long. Opened the lid and put in a temperature probe. The chicken breast was registering 200F!. That was hot enough for me - too hot, actually. So I shut the thing off and pulled the chicken out - which of course fell into pieces. It left behind a nice stew of potatoes, onions, tomatoes, flavored with garlic and the various herbs I had added initially inside the chicken.

Had I not been present, this dish would have been overdone to the point of being inedible again. As it is, at six hours it was overdone - the internal temp of the chicken need only be 180, and 160 probably would have been fine.

From my reading it appears that the mfg's have all increased the heating temps, even on low, to avoid problems some people had with bacterial growth etc. So now it appears that the new low is like the old high, and lord knows what the new high is.

I'm thinking I might take a chance next on the Hamilton Beach to see if perhaps I can get one that is put together right. A temperature probe, at least for chicken, seems to be essential with these modern hot-running crock pots.

And if the Hamilton Beach craps out there's still Kitchenaid - which at least has an extra low setting (they call it "simmer"), and some models have fully adjustable cooking times as well.

At least I gave it a chance.

The other thing - this unit ran very hot outside, as well. The old Crockpot has visible heating elements only on the sides. The new one I guess has them on the sides and the bottom. The counter top got very warm during the first four hours, so I lifted up the crockpot and put a wood cutting board under it, just to avoid scorching the formica. The outside sides ran very hot as well, much hotter than I recall the old one running.

 

[mixfinder]

Kitchenaid

The complaint has been the amount of time food is in the danger zone 65-140 degrees. The newer pots have beefed up the heating capacity to get the load above 140 as quickly as possible. Many of the lesser expensive brands don't offer lower options. The Kitchenaid and the uniquely similar All-Clad, had many complaints about the ceramic vessel cracking. It is a combination of an aggressive heating element and loading a cold ceramic insert in a hot cooker. All-Clad has switched their insert to cast aluminum which can go to the stove top to brown or in a conventional oven for a glazed finish. Kitchenaid is still stubbornly trying to educate the user not to start the cooker without the pot and not to refrigerate the vessel full of food prior to cooking. Many cooks prepare the pot the night before and toss it in the cooker in the morning. Calphalon introduced a beautry on the market this year. I have their waffle iron and it's a show stopper.

 

[sudsmaster]

The Rival I bought would be OK if it offered additional times. But eight hours at low is simply too long to cook a chicken, not when it starts to boil at five hours. I could put it on a separate timer, to shut it off early, but four hours with no power would be just too long to let it go.

The Hamilton Beach also has complaints about cracked crocks, but I suppose if I'm careful not to load up the unit and store in fridge overnight before cooking, it will stay in one piece. I really do think that for chicken, a temperature probe is the only way to ensure that more delicate meats (like chicken) don't get overcooked.

Another possibility is a Rival or other brand with a programmable timer where the times are not limited to a few selections. So I could set up a chicken dish to cook for, say five hours on low, and then let it switch automatically to warm until I got home (a total of about nine hours).

The All-Clad looks nice, but there's no mention of an aluminum insert on their web site.

My old 4.5 qt Rival oval could be put on a timer... I figure I could set it for seven hours and then let it sit with residual heat for another couple of hours without risking food spoilage. It heats at a lower temp than the newer Rival. I'm probably going to put both on the watt meter to see what the differences are.

 

[sudsmaster]

Interesting.

The modern Crockpot runs at about 250 watts on high. On low, it cycles between 150 and 250. On warm, it cycles between 250 and 0. After an hour or so, about 2 inches of water in the crock reached 134F at the warm setting.

Next I'll test the old model. This should be easier because it only has two settings (off low high) and it has no computer to cycle the voltage up and down.

 

[xraytech]

All of my slow cookers are at least 18 yrs old except I have one digital slow cooker,
It took me a while to find one that was flexible enough, I bought the Kenmore digital slow cooker, it has 4 heat settings,keep warm, low, med, and high, it has a 24 hour timer so you can set it to any time then it will automatically shift to keep warm for up to 24 hours. The Kenmore also has a 7 qt crock so it has more capacity, plus it is heat resistent and can be used in the oven. It only cost $44.99 at Sears. I have had mine for almost 3 yrs now, it works great and gets alot of use.