Crockpot Cooking: 10 Secret Cooking Tips & Food Preparation Tricks for the Slow Cooker

Find out how to make your crockpot recipes taste even better with these handy slow cooking tips and food preparation tricks.

Welcome back to my Crockpot Cooking Column!

Hi! It’s great to have you back here and following my weekly Crockpot Cooking column. I have already told you how you can benefit from using a slow cooker or ‘crockpot’ to create healthy, warming and affordable home-cooked meals that are perfect for busy students or working singles and couples – if you haven’t read my previous article make sure you check it out here – Now then, before I get down to all the actual cooking, I am going to share with you this gloriousl list of secret slow cooking tips and food preparation tips specifically aimed at crockpot cooking so that you will know how to best use your crockpot to create great tasting, easy food! Bookmark this page so or print it out and stick it on your fridge so that you can refer to it on your crockpot cooking journey!

#1 Do Not Fill Your Crockpot to the Brim!

If you pack your pot full of ingredients then you are not going to get the best cooking experience. It is better to purchase a bigger pot if you want to cook in bulk for the week. Aim to fill your crockpot halfway or three quarters of the way at most to make sure that everything cooks evenly.

#2 Pay Close Attention to Recipe Instructions

young woman reading tablet recipe

When you are cooking with a crockpot, recipes will usually take into consideration the fact that the ingredients will be cooking for such an extended period of time, which means that once liquids are released from the ingredients during cooking, the ingredients at the bottom of the pot will be fully immersed in the liquid and therefore will cook at a different rate. If a recipe tells you to put one ingredient in before another, for example vegetables before meat, it is because the first ingredient takes longer to cook, so don’t think you know better.

#3 On the Other Hand, Sometimes You Can Ignore Recipe Instructions

If you are in a hurry and you just literally want to just sling everything into the pot and go, then don’t worry too much about things like browning meat to retain its colour or frying onions first for flavor. Overlooking these details won’t ruin your dish it will just mean that the final result will taste different. You can experiment and see if the difference in taste is worth the extra hassle of the food prep.

#4 Trim the fat and skin off your meat

Remember that the oil and fat won’t drain out of your meat and disappear to the edge of the frying pan or griddle – everything that goes into the crockpot stays there. So you can make your dish healthier without compromising on taste by simply removing the fat and skin from you meat before you pop it into the pot! It will also reduce the chances of getting pools of oil in your stew.

#5 How to Thicken Your Dish

With it’s airtight lid, no liquid is going to escape from your crockpot while cooking. This also means that your dish won’t be able to thicken. You can help your dish to thicken by rolling your meat in seasoned flour to add substance, or adding a small amount of corn flour mixed into a paste towards the end. Sometimes cooking the dish on a high temperature for half an hour at the end can help to thicken it too.

#6 Don’t be tempted to take the Lid off

You might want to check on your dish halfway through, but don’t be tempted to take the lid off. As soon as you do, you will let out the heat and slow down the cooking time even more because it is cooking on such a low heat setting, which is not a good thing. Leave it to do its thing, and if you must check it, try spinning the top if it is round, until the condensation spins off and you can see through the glass.

#7 Plan Meals Ahead

chicken in red crock pot

If you plan your meals ahead of time, then you can assess how long a dish will last you, so that you can begin preparing ingredients for the next slow-cooked dish and save on preparation time. You can do things like skin chicken and prepare vegetables a few days before you want to start cooking, so that when the time comes you can literally put everything in the pot before you go to work, and take up less time in the morning when you need to get ready to catch your train.

#8 Save More Money by Buying Cheaper Cuts of Meat

Slow cookers are perfect for using cheaper cuts of meat, like chicken thighs and pork shoulder. The great thing about using a crockpot is that the meaty flavour will really penetrate the rest of the dish because of the extended cooking time, and this means that you can actually use less meat without having to compromise on flavor, and pad the dish out with chunky, healthy vegetables instead!

#9 Why Have Only One Crockpot When You Could Have Two?

You don’t necessarily want to be eating the same dish all week, do you? That could get tedious. So why not cook two at the same time in two separate crockpots, and alternate? You can even freeze individual meals if you have cooked too much for one person. Alternatively, you could cook a main meal in one crockpot and a sweet dish in the other!

#10 Cook Rice or Noodles Separately

You can cook rice and noodles in a crockpot but you should wait until the end before you add them because they will just turn to mush otherwise. It is usually best to boil these on the hob and serve it separately or mix them I at the end.

Join Me Next Week…

Well, I hope these tips and tricks will help you to get the most out of your slow cooker. Next week we will actually start making some good hearty food to keep out this wintery chill, so get ready to have some fun crockpot cooking with me!

About the author

Zara M.

I love to write, draw, take photographs, dance tango, write in my Midori Traveler’s Notebook and ogle other people’s Filofaxes. Oh – and I like LOTS of sugar in my tea! I want to inspire you, and show you the world through my eyes.

Add Comment

Click here to post a comment