Slow Cooker Revolution: One Test Kitchen. 30 Slow Cookers. 200 Amazing Recipes. Author: America's Test Kitchen | Language: English | ISBN:
B004W3VLPY | Format: PDF
Slow Cooker Revolution: One Test Kitchen. 30 Slow Cookers. 200 Amazing Recipes. Description
Who doesn't like the idea of throwing ingredients into a slow cooker and coming back hours later to a finished meal? Too bad most slow cooker recipes deliver mediocre results you'd rather forget than fix again. A team of ten test cooks at America's Test Kitchen spent a year developing recipes, and what they discovered will change the way you use your slow cooker.
Did you know that onions garlic, and spices should be bloomed in the microwave for five minutes before they go into the slow cooker? This simple step intensifies their flavor and requires no extra work. Did you know that a little soy sauce mixed with tomato paste adds meaty flavors to almost any stew and can often replace the tedious step of browning the meat? And do you know the secret to a moist slow-cooker chicken? Start the bird upside down to protect the delicate white meat from drying out.
The 200 recipes in this family-friendly collection deliver a revolution in slow cooking like only America's Test Kitchen can!
- File Size: 17019 KB
- Print Length: 336 pages
- Publisher: America's Test Kitchen (April 11, 2011)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B004W3VLPY
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,329 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Appliances - #38
in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Methods > Slow Cooking - #82
in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Kitchen Appliances
- #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Appliances - #38
in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Methods > Slow Cooking - #82
in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Kitchen Appliances
The "new" name is "slow cooker" but most of us know the device as a "crockpot" because that's the name it was first marketed under a couple of decades ago. If you're like me, you got one because you thought, "Hey, I can put in the ingredients in the morning and have a tasty meal when I get home from work - cool". Then you found out that only certain recipes seemed to work well in the crockpot, er, slow cooker. You bought crockpot cookbooks, and found while many of them were beautifully designed with multiple and elaborate fonts, blank spaces for notes, line drawings of cute little collections of vegetables, the recipes either contained about 20 different ingredients or else the recipe required so much pre-browning, pre-sautéing, post-blending, post-broiling of the ingredients that it would just be quicker to cook the darn recipe once you got home from work.
I am really happy to say that "Slow Cooker Revolution" is the first sensible slow cooker cookbook in my collection of them. The book is very well designed. There is a page devoted to each recipe, and most recipes have a picture of the finished product. There is a list of ingredients, and from what I saw, everything there is available in my local supermarket. Each recipe starts off with a paragraph entitled, "Why It Works", in which the authors explain the choices behind certain ingredients or methods and why they work better than others. The recipes are clear-cut and easy to follow. Each recipe also an additional segment - either a "quick prep tip" or a "smart shopping" hint or an "on the side" short recipe.
I'm a big fan of Cook's Illustrated . I get their flagship magazine and Cook's Country and watch both America's Test Kitchen versions faithfully on PBS. I'm also a frequent buyer of their cookbooks and have found many of my all-time favorite recipes in their pages.
Unfortunately, after making three of the recipes from "Slow Cooker Revolution," I'm not sold on this particular effort. All were OK, none spectacular, and, as far as I can tell, just about every one previously published. (A cheat often used by Cook's, but still annoying for its most loyal readers.)
My major complaint--and it seems to be in most of the recipes, not just the three I've attempted so far--is that Cook's takes what is best about the slow cooker, it's convenience (set it and forget it one-pot meals), and throws it out the window by requiring countless pre-cooking steps--far more than just browning meat or sautéing vegetables--that often dirty multiple pots, pans and bowls before you ever even get the ingredients into the slow cooker itself. There's also a good bit of post-cooking in many of these recipes, along with mid-cooking steps/additions that means you're constantly babysitting the slow cooker, even after getting the ingredients going. Not terribly practical for a device specifically designed to cook while you're not here.
If I'm going to use a dishwasher full of dishes, what's the point of dragging out the crockpot just to do the heating?
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