Thank you for the additional thought Trish. Most appreciated. I will keep an eye on them, I will be home all day.
Kazbah, lamb shanks look a bit like giant drumsticks (in Safeway they sell them in a marinade as "Lamb Drumsticks"! Funny I think.) They are absolutely delicious, especially when cooked real slow. Well, a chef I worked with made the most tender shanks, but I never got him to tell me how before he left, so I'm hoping mine turn out just as good in the SC. I don't think they need much in the way of sauce, but we'll see how it is with the tomato.
I'll let you all know how they turn out.
Ok. This how they turned out.... Bleh! Not impressed at all. They turned out so much better and fell off the bone when I cooked them the other night in the oven. They cooked alright, but weren't anything like I expected they might be (in the SC).
Even though I would prefer not to use the oven when it is hot, and I have to make sure that buby doesn't go near the kitchen, and the fact that I can't go out if it is on, I think I would much rather use the stinking hot oven than my SC.
Crock Pot Lasagna Recipe
Ingredients
1 lb (500g) ground beef
1 large onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, minced (or 2 tspn pre-purchased garlic)
1 lb jar tomato spaghetti sauce - choose your favorite flavor (we used spring vegetable)
8 oz (250g) fresh lasagna sheets (no boil - found in cold section)
1lb (500g) mozzarella cheese - grated/shredded
1lb (500g) ricotta cheese
2 oz (60g) parmesan cheese - grated/shredded
? cup milk
1 egg - lightly beaten
1 tsp oregano
salt and pepper
Optional other favorite herbs - depends how much is in the sauce you use.
mushrooms - sliced and added at end of frying meat
Method
1. Fry the beef, onion and garlic in a frying pan, using a tiny amount of oil.
2. Fry until slightly browned. And pour off any excess oil. Add tomato sauce and heat through.
3. Meanwhile, gently combine the ricotta, milk and egg.
4. Then mix in the mozzarella and parmesan. Retaining about 1 tbls of parmesan for later.
5. Now we are ready to construct it in the crock pot. We found there was no need to grease the pot, but if you must - do it now.
6. Using a large serving spoon or ladle, place about ? of the meat mixture in the crock pot - spread evenly.
7. Top this with a layer of lasagna sheets, cut to size. (See the notes below)
8. Top this with 1/3 of the cheese sauce.
9. Repeat steps 6, 7 and 8 once more. You should now have cheese sauce on top.
10. Now repeat step 6, then 7 and 6 again.
11. Top with remaining cheese sauce.
12. Sprinkle the retained parmesan on top.
13. Cook on low for 4-6 hours.
Notes
Serves 4-6
While not critical the layers should be -
meat, pasta, cheese, meat, pasta, cheese, meat, pasta, meat, cheese
To assist with cutting the lasagna sheets -
use a plate the same size as the crock pot & cut around using a knife.
Will see if it browns up or not and if it doesn't I wil let you know how we brown it up
I found a meatball recipe with a tomato based sauce that sounded YUMMO so I cooked it up last week. The meatballs were SO YUM but the sauce wasn't that great. It was quite tangy which I think might have been because of the dry red wine it called for??? I'm not sure...
So my question is this... what other kinds of sauces can I use with meatballs that is also good to cook in the SC because the meatballs were divine cooked in the SC and it was SO simple.
I thought of some sort of swedish meatball recipe but wasn't sure if it would work in the SC because it is cream based???
Any help and/or ideas and/or recipes to try would be GREATLY appreciated!
Hi girls, I think I may become a SC fan too.... I just have to find the right one. Have been doing lots of research and have found this:
Design
A slow cooker consists of a lidded round or oval cooking pot made of glazed ceramic or porcelain, surrounded by a housing, usually metal, containing a thermostatically controlled electric heating element. The lid is often transparent glass and is not hermetic. The ceramic pot, or a crock pot, acts as both a cooking container and a heat reservoir. Slow cookers come in a variety of sizes, from 500 ml (16 oz) to 7 liters (quarts). Due to the placement of heating elements, there is generally a minimum recommended liquid level to avoid uncontrolled local heating.
Many slow cookers have two or more temperature settings (low, medium, high, and sometimes a "keep warm" setting). A typical slow cooker operates at 80?C (176?F) on low, 90?C (194?F) on high, and 1 hour at 90?C followed by 80?C on medium. Some slow cookers sold in the US in the past several decades did not slow cook at all: all of the settings brought the contents to a full boil, with the only difference in setting being the amount of time to come to a boil. This may have been due to concerns about product liability from unsafe food holding temperatures.[citation needed]
[edit] Operation
Raw food, and a liquid which is predominantly water, such as water, wine, stock, but not oil without water, are placed in the slow cooker. Some recipes call for pre-heated liquid. The cooker lid is put on and the cooker is switched on. Cookers often have high and low heat thermostat settings. Some cookers automatically switch from cooking to warming (maintaining the temperature at 62?C–72?C/145?F–165?F,[3]) after a fixed time or after the internal temperature of the food, as determined by a probe, reaches a given goal.
The heating element heats the contents to a steady temperature in the 80–95?C/175–200?F range. The contents are enclosed by the crock and the lid, and attain an essentially constant temperature. The little vapor that is produced at this temperature condenses on the lid and returns as liquid.
The liquid transfers heat from the pot walls to the contents, and it also distributes flavours. A lid must be used to prevent warm vapor from escaping, cooling the contents.
[edit] Recipes
Recipes intended for other cooking methods must be modified for slow cookers. Often water must be decreased, as cooking at higher temperatures requires enough liquid to allow for evaporation. Some slow cookers are supplied with recipe booklets; many slow cooker recipes are to be found in cookbooks and on the internet. A small number of cookbooks seek to make complete dishes in a slow cooker using fewer than five ingredients, while others treat the slow cooker as a serious piece of culinary equipment capable of producing gourmet meals. With some experience, timing and recipe adjustments can be successfully made for many recipes not originally intended for these cookers. The long, moist nature of the cooking method gives good results with cheaper (and tougher) cuts of meat.
[edit] Advantages
In a slow cooker, the temperature is low enough to avoid badly overcooking food even if cooked for far longer than necessary. However, success will rely on careful timing, as in all cooking. Meat may become nearly tasteless or "raggy" if overcooked, but the slow cooking process is especially useful to tenderize cheaper cuts. Some foods are better cooked at temperatures below boiling. In particular, the tough connective tissues of meat are broken down without affecting the texture of the meat.
Slow cookers enjoyed a surge of popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, as former housewives joined the workforce and enjoyed the prospect of a hot meal available on returning home from work. The lengthy cooking times allowed them to start dinner cooking before leaving for work. Overnight cooking, utilizing economy rated power, cuts the cost of the meal. For best results, many cooks part-cook root vegetables and sear meat prior to inclusion; then the slow cooker finishes the process of blending flavours, adding convenience and reducing washing up, as this is a "one pot" cooking method.
[edit] Disadvantages
Vitamins and other trace nutrients are lost, particularly from vegetables, partially by enzyme action during cooking. When vegetables are cooked at higher temperatures these enzymes are rapidly denatured and have less time in which to act during cooking. Since slow cookers work at temperatures well below boiling point and do not rapidly denature enzymes, vegetables tend to lose trace nutrients. Blanched vegetables, having been exposed to very hot water, have already had these enzyme rendered largely ineffective, so a blanching or sauteing pre-cook stage will leave more vitamins intact. Green colors are retained better when vegetables are cooked quickly as plant cells are less likely to lose acids.
Kidney beans, and some other beans, contain a toxin, phytohaemagglutinin, which is destroyed by cooking at boiling point but not at the operating temperature of a slow cooker. They become safe to eat after boiling for a minimum of ten minutes, or if they come from a can. Such precautions must be observed if kidney beans are included in slow cooker recipes, as the relatively low temperatures in a slow cooker will not destroy the toxin adequately, and serious food poisoning may occur.[4] Kidney beans can be as much as five times more toxic if cooked at 80 ?C than if eaten raw, so exposing them to a high temperature for an adequate time prior to slow cooking is vital.
Slow cookers do not typically provide sufficient heat to compensate for frequent additions and removals of food in perpetual stews (pot au feu, olla podrida); nor do they cook quickly enough to cook newly added food thoroughly before the next withdrawal becomes likely. This relatively slow recovery of temperature after an addition or withdrawal may cause safety problems. Removal of the lid lets heat and moisture escape, prolonging cooking time and giving microbes the chance to grow.
Like some other kinds of pottery, some slow cookers crocks are glazed with a formula containing lead.[5] Lead is a toxic metal, causing neurological and developmental damage in even small quantities, and it is not easily cleared from the body, so its dangers continue.
BG and Becstar: I wonder if your SCs are set too hot on their lowest setting meaning that you are getting too much condensation?
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