/ck/ - Food & Cooking

This one works pretty well

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/slow-cooker-beef-stew-i/

Pulled Pork (most of the measurements will depend on how many you intend to feed):

1 Boston butt (actually the shoulder of the pig) with the fat left on
1 large vidalia onion, chopped
Seasonings, I usually just go with garlic powder, salt, and pepper
1 can Canada Dry ginger ale
BBQ sauce of your choosing (optional)

Season your pork on all sides, including the fat layer. Place it in your crock pot, fat layer up. Cover this in your onions. Pour in enough ginger ale to cover the bottom of the pot and a bit of the meat. Usually just about a full can works for me.

I let this cook on low all day, but a couple hours on high will have the same effect. Once the meat is cooked, remove the cooked fat layer, and with two forks (or your clean hands) remove chunks of pork to a serving dish. You can leave the chunks as chunks, or shred the meat, up to you. Once you've gotten most of the meat, drain the juice from the crock into a sieve to catch the onions, if you plan on saving them.

At this point you can either toss the onions back in with the meat, or leave them on the side. Generally, I don't add any BBQ sauce. Serve on bulky rolls with your choice of sauce/cheese/topping.

It's not fancy, but it's tasty.

>>5026762
Pulled pork is great from the crock pot, it retains a lot more flavor and is more juicy than oven pulled pork.

Just got a Crock Pot as a gift and I've loved it .

Made this Pumpkin Oatmeal
-1 cup water
-1 cup milk (I use skim)
-1 tsp nutmeg, cinnamon, salt
-1/3 cup brown sugar
-can of pumpkin puree
-2 cups of long cook oats

I let it cook for 8 hours overnight on low.

>>5026810
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
Forgot. My bad.

Chili is great for a slow cooker.

Just brown your meat, and throw everything in the damn pot. Cook for as long as you want/can. Almost impossible to fuck up.

The thing about crockpots is that you can dump almost anything in it, let it sit for a few hours, and have something decent come out.

Any assortment of meat and veggies works really well.

Ask the butcher for the toughest, most tendon and connective tissue-filled piece of meat he has. Brown meat on stove and place meat in crock pot with onions, garlic, whatever liquid you want (beer, wine, broth, etc), maybe some other spices and vegetables, and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Bask in the glory of slow cooked meat. Shoulder roasts work quite well too.

>>5026810
You can do apples, pears...any sort of hard fruit...

Oh boy, crock pot cooking is great, especially when you're going to be out and about all day; coming home to a warm delicious slow-cooked meal is king.

Since beef stew, chilli and pulled pork have been suggested, I'd say if you were thinking to make something very simple just in case you're worried about messing up a meal with many ingredients (though the other anons are right, it's nigh impossible to fuck up with a crock pot), try a makeshift stroganoff type dealie. Stewing beef dredged in seasoned flour and browned, added to the crock with some canned mushroom soup (with the liquid obviously, so you have soup instead of a condensed can-shaped glorp of mushroom jelly), and some chopped button mushrooms. Just add some salt and pepper, and let it cook for 6-8 hours. Browning the meat first is preferable so you don't get fatty bloody meat lipids floating around in the soup. I mean it'd still end up tasting fine, but just brown the meat first. When it's done, serve over egg noodles or potatoes or rice.

>>5026570
Easiest recipe ever, pulled pork.

>put pork shoulder or pork butt in crockpot
>add 1 cup Coca-Cola
>cook for a long time on low (8 hours?)
>Shred cooked pork
>Add one bottle of your favorite barbecue sauce
>Let it warm up
>Slap a spoonful on a roll
You have just made pulled pork sandwiches.

>>5026570
No. It is literally impossible to do a google search for crockpot recipes. Throw out your useless device. You will never figure out its complexities.

>>5026889
This. Slow Cookers are great if you are on a budget, because you can make great use of the cheaper, tougher, cuts of meat.

When I was living at home my dad used to cook everything in a crock pot. They're great, I'm just the kind of person that decides last minute what to make, where as crock pot cooking you gotta plan ahead. There is literally endless recipes. I have a recipe book somewhere thats the size of a phone book. Just google it.

>>5027064
Dude you 'plan ahead' by throwing what you want to eat in crockpot in the am, eat it in the pm and have leftovers for 2-3 days depending on your eating habits.

Pic related. The pumpkin oatmeal I made. Goes good with some whipped cream and cinnamon. Leaves you full for a while. Yay fiber.

>>5027172
Leftovers?
People actually eat old food?

>>5026570
>it being a useless gimmick

It kind of is a gimmick. It simply duplicates a braise, which you can do with a pot or a dutch oven on your range or inside the oven.

If you're looking for recipes there's the obvious--google for slow cooker recipes--but since it's simply a braising device, you can use it for any traditional dish that would be braised or simmered low and slow: stew, pasta sauce, soups, pot roast, chili, etc.

>>5027197
some people don't enjoy cooking enough spend their 1-2 hours a day doing it.
Some foods (such as stews and soups which crockpots are great for) taste better when left to meld for a day or two

>>5027200
>it's a gimmick not to heat up a giant metal box that in turn heats up your kitchen and the rest of your house for hours but instead use technology to heat the vessel itself and nothing else

But TRADITION!

>>5027189

>whipped cream
>on anything

gag

>>5027204

The heat output of the two are comparable because thermostat and insulation. Do you even science?

>>5027240
>using "science" as a synonym for "I don't understand it but I believe it in my gut also sciency words I remember from 7th grade"

I give you 2/10, it's the best I can do

>>5027244
>>using "science" as a synonym
Nah, using it because that's part of the culture on this board.

I find it so sad that you have such a poor understanding of how things work.

> I believe it in my gut

Isn't that what you're doing right now? You just happen to be wrong about it.

Both ovens and crockpots contain a thermostat. They're not on constantly, they switch on and off as needed to maintain the desired temperature. Most ovens have significantly better insulation than a crock pot does--a simple glance at the thickness makes that obvious, as does the fact that ovens are built to go to much higher temperatures. The difference is even more obvious since the lid of a crockpot (heat rises, remember?) is uninsulated, whereas the entirety of an oven is.

If you think I'm full of it, it's easy enough to measure the power consumption of both using an ammeter. You won't find an appreciable difference. Though I know you won't even try, you've already made up your mind.

>>5027261

You posted the claim. You post your measurements. While you're at it, post which model of oven you're using. With photos.

Heating up a large volume of air to heat up a small pot to heat something inside the pot is insanely inefficient. Unless you are using an airtight oven with insanely good insulation, it's not going to beat a crock pot. Because science.

>>5027261
What the ever loving fucking fancy pants oven do you have?
Maybe mine is just old and shit, but it just keeps heating over time.

>>5027261
>>5027273

Just fuck already.

Pot roast
Pulled pork
Mulled wine
Stew
Chicken soup
Chicken vindaloo

Really, the thing should've come with a recipe book at that.

>>5027297

All ovens have thermostats. Otherwise the temperature would never stop rising until the contents were charcoal. That's why there is a temperature setting. The oven cycles on and off to maintain that temperature.

>>5027324
>The oven cycles on and off to maintain that temperature.

Wow, thanks for that amazing insight that has nothing to do with anything.

Post your measurements. Because 10 seconds of google revealed that there is a widespread urban legend that ovens are more efficient than crock pots, complete with measurements showing that crock pots are more efficient by far.

>>5027273
>Heating up a large volume of air to heat up a small pot to heat something inside the pot is insanely inefficient

Lol, no. The density of air is low. It's specific heat is low too. It takes little energy to heat. let's do some math. Suppose you have an enormous oven: the interior volume is one whole cubic meter. That's much larger than the inside of the typical home oven.

Google says the density of air at room temp and sea leavel is 1.2 kg per cubic meter.

Now let's calculate how much energy it takes to heat that air from room temp (20C) to boiling hot (100C). According to:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-specific-heat-various-pressures-d_1535.html, the specific heat of air at sea level is 1006 joules/kg per degree C. So, to raise the temp 80 degrees (20 to 100) it takes 80 x 1006 = 80,480 joules. Joules = watts x seconds. So, for example, that is equal to running a 100 watt light bulb for about 800 seconds, or 13 minutes. That's very little. Let's see what it costs.

According to here:
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a
...the average cost of residential electricity in the US is 12.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. 1 KWh is 3,600,000 Joules. We're using only 80k. Thus we are only using 0.22 kWH of electricity to heat the air in our giant oven from room temp to 100C, or about 0.0013 cents worth. Who cares?

>>5027349

Oops! You forgot why it's inefficent: that huge volume of air is leaking energy to ventilation, radiation, and conduction. Unless of course you've invented an oven that defies the laws of physics in which case you might want to patent that and save humanity.

>>5027376

All of which apply to a crock pot as well.

>>5027386

The surface area of which is considerably smaller. Go look up on your engineering toolbox how to calculate surface area. Make sure to leave out something extremely important, so I can smugly correct you. But make it quick I have to leave for work soon.

>>5027391
>>5027386

Ok, I have to go, but here have this. Notice how actual realistic temperatures are used as well.

>>5026570
>I bought something. Now what do I do with it?
You're from /g/, aren't you? Normal people figure that shit out before buying something.