Notes about Recipes in this book

• Red wine-braised short ribs

  • hiraeth27 on November 29, 2018

    I don't know why they call this red wine-braised...almost all of the liquid is from tomatoes. It calls for half a cup wine and four cans of tomatoes. That's a 1 to 7 ratio. In the end, it just tasted like beef cooked in canned tomatoes. In a slow cooker, the tomatoes don't even cook down enough to concentrate the flavors and avoid wateriness. After ten hours of slow cooking, I dumped this into a stovetop pan, added another half a bottle of wine and reduced it down to just under the original volume. Much better.

• New Mexican red pork chili

  • TrishaCP on February 09, 2019

    This was tasty. It is a slow cooker recipe that requires some of your time beforehand (sautéing veg, etc), but then cooks long enough (9-10 hours) that you can make it on a day you are at work. (I just prepped the night before.) There is no degreasing step, but we found it was needed.

  • ashallen on October 29, 2019

    I really, really like this recipe - very flavorful!! Pork also gets really nicely tender. I use a bit more onion than called for in the recipe (2-3 cups). I prefer the raisins to be well cooked and for their sweetness to permeate the sauce so I chop them up well and stir them in half-way through cooking instead of adding them whole at the end. Like TrishaCP, I've found that a degreasing step can be helpful - whether or not I need to degrease seems to depend on how much care I take to trim fat from the pork before placing it in the slow cooker. [Cross-post for Slow Cooker Revolution/Complete Slow Cooker.]

• Thai chicken with coconut curry sauce

  • SenseiHeidi on September 18, 2019

    Yummy! Use at least 2 Tbsp green curry paste. I used regular sweetened flake coconut. Check the chicken temp after 45 minutes.

• Smothered pork chops with apples

  • SenseiHeidi on September 02, 2021

    Used 4lb butt roast, upped s&p to 1tsp each. Microwaved the onions with 1/2 s&p for 2 minutes, dumped all in pot, onions on bottom. Did not use the flour or vinegar. Also did not bother to saute. 2tbsp cornstarch slurry at end. 4 hours on High was plenty. Served with mashed potatoes with peas and corn.

• Applesauce spice cake

  • adewar on May 10, 2020

    This cake was tender and well risen - no hard crust, and it was brown and looked appetizing. My family thought it tasted more like banana cake than apple -possibly because of the spices. A good plain cake for everyday.

• Brazilian black bean and pork stew

  • JessicaRFisher on September 27, 2020

    This is a favourite in our house. It makes loads and freezes well. I have a spicy mango relish that is delicious with it.

  • JessicaRFisher on April 01, 2021

    This is a firm family favourite in our house. It makes a huge quantity and freezes well.

• Classic pot roast with carrots and potatoes

  • WasagaGirl on November 11, 2018

    I liked this one....I didn't think there would be enough liquid but there was more than enough. Wrapping the roast in tinfoil seemed to really improve the texture.

• Asian-style braised short ribs

  • ashallen on June 18, 2021

    This recipe has an excellent effort-to-flavor ratio. Super easy with minimal prep. Ribs were perfectly tender and sauce was great straight from the slow cooker - no need for further reduction. Flavor was very good even with my not-so-great hoisin sauce. Flavors mellowed a lot during the long cooking so the final sauce tasted like slightly sweet beef gravy. I halved the chili-garlic sauce and that was a good level of heat for us. When I first set everything up for cooking, I wondered if the amount of liquid called for would be enough, but the ribs exuded enough fat/liquid during cooking that it wasn't an issue. Recipe says it yields 2 servings, but we were happy eating this over ~4 meals. If you have time to refrigerate before eating, the rendered fat solidifies on top of the sauce, making it very easy to peel away, and the meat develops a silkier texture.

• Hearty beef stew

  • ashallen on November 16, 2020

    Very good stew - given the basic nature of the recipe, I was actually surprised that I liked it as much as I did! Both the meat and the vegetables come out very nicely tender. Not as sumptuously flavored as one of Julia Child's beef stew recipes, but like TrishaCP, I love that it skips the messy meat-browning step. Easy to pull together overall - trimming the meat of excess fat/membrane was the most fiddly part. Freezes well. [Cross-post Slow Cooker Revolution/Complete Slow Cooker]

• Thai chicken and coconut soup

  • ashallen on August 25, 2019

    Good soup. Last weekend I made a quick-cooked version which I prefer to this slow-cooked version - overall the quick-cooked version's flavors seemed fresher and more nuanced (despite the very good approach in this slow-cooked recipe of adding many of the aromatics at the very end). But this recipe has a couple of attributes some might like - (1) the chicken has classic slow cooker flavor/texture, and (2) fat rises to the surface during cooking and can be skimmed or left in the soup as desired. My coconut milk had only guar gum as an additive - the can I added at the beginning of cooking broke. (The can added at the end of the cooking process didn't break.) There was enough unemulsified chicken + coconut fat to make the final soup seem greasy - next time I'll skim off more. Freezes OK with some loss of the more aromatic flavors.

• Golden Northern cornbread

  • ashallen on November 13, 2020

    We really like this cornbread recipe and have made it many times. I especially love the texture which is high, light (but still substantial), a bit springy, and moist. Not too sweet and good corn flavor. Be careful not to overbake - it dries out. It's definitely best the day it's made, but keeps okay for a day or so. Recipe calls for stone-ground cornmeal but a coarse grind yielded a gritty cornbread - we like a medium or fine grind best. Also works well when doubled and baked in a 9x13-inch pan. [Cross-post for Cook's Ill. Magazine/Cook's Ill. 1995 Annual Edition/ Cook's Ill. Cookbook/ The Complete Slow Cooker/ A Bread a Day blog]

• Game day brats and beer

  • JTelcontar on December 03, 2020

    Did not strain the cooking juice as suggested. It's delicious and helps make the bun a bit juicy (recommend a sturdier bun-- we used pretzel buns). Will be using the leftovers over mashed potatoes!

• Shredded beef tacos with cabbage-carrot slaw

  • D.Barker on October 13, 2021

    This was pretty good! I loved the flavor of the meat, though the slaw wasn't that exciting to me.