No-fail recipe? Wrong! Sometimes a slow cooker recipe can fail. But it’s not the machine’s fault, dammit. Slow cookers aren’t meant to cook everything.Â
1) Frozen meat
A slow cooker cooks food slowly. Good if it’s soup, potentially bad if it’s frozen flesh. The slow cooker can hold meat in the food temperature danger zone (between 5° C and 60° C), long enough for bacteria to rear their ugly heads. And then wreak havoc with your guts. Unless the recipe specifies cooking meat from frozen, you’re best to thaw it first.
How to pick the perfect meat thermometer
2) Cruciferous veggies
Broccoli, cauliflower, and bok choy can turn into lumpy, unappetizing mush. You’ll be robbing your teeth of their only joy.
3) The holiday turkeyÂ
First of all, you’d need a big honkin’ cooker to fit a 26-lb bird. And what you pull out at the end will have rubbery skin and an uneven cook—juicy in some parts and dry in others. No one is going to Instagram that thing.
4) Straight pasta
It’ll get gummy. Plus, why haul the slow cooker out of the cupboard when you can prepare noodles in minutes on the stove?Â
Try this easy shortcut to homemade ravioli
5) Wine
Sure, you can use wine in a slow cooker dish. But if the recipe calls for a lot, it won’t boil and evaporate enough to get rid of the alcohol content. Your stew will be boozy. In a gross way. One solution? Replace the wine with broth. Yay, now you have a bottle of wine to drink!
This article was originally published in the Winter 2020 issue of Cottage Life.
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