Recommend a crockpot

Dizzyblonde

pickarooney wrote: »

I just wish I could get my head around what's going wrong.

I'm no expert but I've been cooking for my family for decades, and in my opinion it's to do with the fact that there's no evaporation of liquid in a slow cooker. When you cook by other methods the sauce/gravy reduces and so the flavours become more intense, but in the slow cooker the opposite seems to happen. You end up with a lot more liquid and the flavours are diluted.

I love my slow cooker but I wouldn't use it for everything.

Kev.

To get a nice thick sauce you need to add a cup of cornflour mixed with hot water,

This will thicken it up nicely without ruining the taste

vibe666

a cup?

i assume you mean a couple of teaspoons of cornflour in a cup mixed with hot water. a cup of cornflour would turn your food into a big solid block! :eek:

i find the easiest way with a slow cooker to avoid watery sauce is to just not put any liquid in at all if possible. you'll find that the food you put in has plenty enough liquid in it already that will come out as you are cooking.

if you are worried about it all drying out, just keep an eye on it with a cup of water handy nearby, but i'd bet that in most cases, you won't even need it and the food will come out just fine as is.

pickarooney

vibe666 wrote: »

a cup?

i assume you mean a couple of teaspoons of cornflour in a cup mixed with hot water. a cup of cornflour would turn your food into a big solid block! :eek:

i find the easiest way with a slow cooker to avoid watery sauce is to just not put any liquid in at all if possible. you'll find that the food you put in has plenty enough liquid in it already that will come out as you are cooking.

if you are worried about it all drying out, just keep an eye on it with a cup of water handy nearby, but i'd bet that in most cases, you won't even need it and the food will come out just fine as is.

I thought that until I tried to make a curry As for keeping an eye on it - no point slow cooking if you have to be there to watch it.

Actually, rather than me moaning - does anyone have a good recipe for beef curry in a crockpot that yields a moist, flavoursome meal with a thick sauce?

vibe666

no, but i'm going to be prepping a beef stew and dumplings tonight to cook tomorrow, so wish me luck.

dxhound2005

This might be a bit off topic and maybe someone has posted about it before. But there was a 2 page article in the Times (of London) today which I can't find online about something called the Wonderbag. I hadn't heard of it before but it seems to be a new version of an old idea for slow cooking. I might get one just for the novelty value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderbag

vibe666

finally got around to making it.

didn't put any liquid in at all to start with, dusted the beef in cornflour and browned it off in the pan before adding on top of the veg. it just needed a cup of water towards the end so the dumplings got properly stewed.

I left it in the slow cooker for 24 hours on the 'warm' setting and just added the dumplings for the last 2 hours and turned it up to high to let them cook out properly.

no spuds in it, just root veg and stuff. we steamed some baby new potatoes and lightly crushed them in the bottom of the bowls before we added the stew.



VERY tasty.

pickarooney

Does anyone know where to get a crockpot online, deliverable to an Irish address?

Dizzyblonde

Power City have some and they deliver. You have to search under 'slow cooker'.

The Kitchen Dresser have some too but they're very expensive.

pickarooney

Brilliant, thanks