Review: Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker

Author Beth Hensperger is not kidding: "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes for Two" stands out as a practical, highly informative cookbook with a very different collection of tasty recipes from the standard chicken roast or beef stew that so often dominate other books of the genre.

And it's loaded with bits of information I've not read elsewhere.

For example, we get an explanation of what slow cooking is and isn't, how a crockpot operates, the best sized cooker for single or two-person use, a time conversion chart between regular oven and crockpots, and, my favorite, "panic proof pantry," a guide to ingredients and foods to have on hand for any occasion and to head off a last-minute rush to the store.

She explains the basics of cooking, noting that there are two ways to heat: moist or dry; dry heat includes roasting, baking, broiling, girlling, toasting, pany frying and deep frying, using microwaves, toasters and conventional ovens.

Moist-heat cooking means stewing, braising, steaming or poaching and uses appliances such as microwaves ovens and stovetops. But the crockpot trumps all the other moist-heat methods and allows for tasty food preparation on a smaller scale. Not to mention that it can be a huge time saver.

It does certainly add time to the cooking process--it's not called slow-cooking for nothing-- but it's the perfect way to prepare a meal while doing something else: start the cooking before you head out the door to work or have other projects to tackle; and voila, when you return, the meal is ready.

The slower process translates like this:
conventional oven: 15 minutes-crockpot: 1 1/2 to 2 hours
conventional: 60 minutes-crockpot: 6 to 8 hours

and so on, to 12 hours or more. I remember my then-little one freaking when we got our first crockpot--"you mean it's going to take LONGER??," fearing, I suppose, she'd starve to death in an afternoon. But she quickly got over it when she realized delicious meals were ready when she wanted them, and now we live off our two pots. Her recipes range in time from 3 hours to 10.

Hensperger explains the workings of a crockpot, while noting newer ones are better than those made even just five years ago:
"The slow-cooker's low wattage, wrap-around heating coils are sandwiched between inner and outer metal walls for indirect heat; the heat source never makes direct contact with the stoneware crock; the coils inside the walls heat up and the space between the base wall and the crock heats, transferring that heat to the stoneware insert. Food cooks at a temperature between 200 and 300 degrees."



The recipes are outstanding:
For main-dish soups, she walks readers through ways to create tasty broths, then moves on to such delights as zucchini soup croutons, butternut squash soup, fennel potato leek soup and chipotle black bean vegetable soup.

Under "The Great American Chili Pot," she offers "Pushpa's chili," old-fashioned beef and mushroom chili, overnight chicken and bean, texas chili, Steve's Poker Night Chili, turkey chili mac, hominy and zucchini chili and turkey chili with baby white beans.

For grains, pasta casseroles and sauces, she gives us 20 recipes, including steelcut oatmeal with raisins, risotto with pancetta and potatoes, slow-baked macaroni and cheese, vegetable polenta with mascarpone cheese and marinara and mozzarella lasagna.

We also are offered plenty of the scrumptious meals involving crockpot standards chicken and turkey, beef and veal, and, with an extra dash of flavor, recipes from around the world for pork and lamb, such as braised pork chops with turnips and apples; lamb korma; country pork ribs with suaerkruat and pears, tagine of lamb, tomato, green beans and sesame; lamb stew agrodolce and Mexican pork chops.

Cooking times and recommended pot size are clearly stated at the beginning of each recipe. And while some of the recipes call for some rather unusual ingredients, most rely on items found in a well-stocked kitchen. This book includes no photos of foods or anything else, except on the cover, so food junkies who love to pore over those pictures may be disappointed. But for the rest of us, this book is a true gem, spilling over with great information and ideas.

In addition to the kid and me, we've switched over to preparing food for our Labrador, because of the pet-food mess. A dog breeder and pet columnist I know uses her second crockpot to prepare foods for her dogs, which I think we'll do, too, as some of the recipes include ingredients, such as onions, that are bad for dogs.

First published at epinions.com