Slow Cooker Chatter #19

[Netix]

Melissa, I am just looking on the justslowcooking website, and a stew there calls for thickening by adding half a cup of dry instant mashed potato....

Something different I suppose.

I am still trying to figure out what to do with this beef I have, and some lentils. STILL looking for a yummy looking dahl recipe! So far its looking like beef, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, beef stock, maybe half an onion.... some tin beans, whatever spices I can find, and maybe some barley. Eeek - what a combination!

[christy]

With my lamb shanks, I use 1 cup red wine & 2 cans of tomatos. I also use 2 carrots chopped and 2 potatos choppes and 1 celery stick chopped, 2 whole garlic cloves and 2 sprigs of rosemary...and then I take out the shanks & mash the veges in the sauce with a masher to make them into a sauce. Sometimes I use my barmixer and I reduce the sauce in a sauce pan for 10 minutes and pour it over the shanks. HTH

[Rivlas]

To thicken, use cornflour with a bit of cold water to mix then use the juice from the slow cooker. Using cornflour keeps the sauce from going cloudy. Another way to thicken stews is to cut up some potatoes, cook in microwave then add to stews. I bought a slow cooker after many years of cooking and am really loving the way cheap meats get really tender.

[Netix]

Speaking of cheap meats, when using gravy beef (hmm, I am sure that is what I bought the other day, I can't remember, even though I am cooking it atm! ), does anyone else trim their meat? I mean of some of the white 'skin' whatever it is? Its not fat, maybe the outside 'sleeve' of the muscle? I am very picky with meat, and won't eat any of the fat or sinewy bits, which annoys my family no end, and it annoys me too, especially when you try to bring children up "not to waste food", as inevitably there is meat that gets discarded with these bits. Anyway, aside from these bits on the gravy beef, I think it is lovely meat, and for $6.99 a kilo, good value, even if all I trimmed off was a bit of fat here and there.

What are everyone else's favourite cheap cuts of meat? And do you trim?

In the sc this morning before going to music group, I managed to put 4 chopped carrots, 4 or 5 chopped potatoes (they weren't very big), a tin of tomatoes, nearly 1kg of gravy beef cut on to small cubes, 2 bay leaves, spoon of gravy powder, 1 cup water, and pepper. I think that was all. I didn't have any beef stock at all, or else I would have put a bit of that in too. I'll let you know later or tomorrow how it all went..... For dinner at 6pm, it will have been on low for 9 hours. Hope its good! Probably serve it with rice or pasta.

Oh yeah, also put in a tin of well rinsed and drained cannellini (sp?) beans. But forgot the tomato paste!

[Rivlas]

Yes, I trim the fat off. The other day I used forequarter chops and browned them in a pan first to remove some of the fat. Keep some stock cubes in the pantry for when you don't have liquid stock, but be careful of adding salt as some of the liquid ones are quite salty.
Have just found onions in a jar, like the garlic, and use that when I run out of onions.

[Netix]

I must admit I have never used the liquid stock, only ever stock cubes or powder. I just went shopping before (and forgot to get a lotto ticket for tonight! ) (mainly went out in the car to put Steph to sleep! ) and bought some beef stock powder as I was contemplating putting some in the sc now, but still haven't. I bought the Continental one, salt reduced. Reading the nutrition tables on the containers, I couldn't believe the levels of sodium in some of the stocks (I only looked at the powders)! This one is 225mg per 100mL, and one of them, which was all vege "beef style" was something like 14500mg per 100mL! I had to look twice that it was in the same unit of measurement with all those extra zeros on the end! Unbelievable!

I usually do have stock powder in the cupboard, but have been rather slack in restocking it lately. As for the onions.... My Mum seems to get a large bag of onions and shares them with me, and since I am rather off them for the moment, they are lasting me ages. I am thinking about chopping them up and freezing them before they start to grow out of control in my cupboard or go off. Yuk, then they stink even more!

[Rivlas]

Wanting to know if anyone has done risotto in the slow cooker? Just learning to make it and want different ways to cook it

[Netix]

GGGRRRRR! I have had my sc on low ALL DAY from 9am to just after 6pm, and the vegies were not cooked, and the meat average. Everything was cut up small, maybe 2cm size pieces, and it was still way undercooked. I dished it up for me, the Man and Steph with rice (which thankfully was cooked properly), without testing it (well, I thought it would be cooked after just over 9 hours cooking time). The Man tried his vege first and was not very impressed. He microwaved his for a few minutes, but still didn't eat the vege. I didn't eat mine at all, and put all the vege (plus my and Steph's meat) back in the sc to cook on high for a while. Terrific. Not happy Jan. And to make things worse, the smell of the stew cooking made me sick and I vomited terribly before dinner, so all I ate was rice anyway.

[mrsmac]

I have just put on my chicken in coke so I will let you know how it goes tonight!!

[Hollybolly]

How did the chicken in coke go mrsmac?

Was thinking about doing this tomorrow night...

[mrsmac]

The flavour was nice but i think there is something wrong with my sc. After 7 hours on low the white meat was really dry and stringy, even the dark meat was a bit dry. This has happened with lots of things I have made, any more than 4 hours on low and they dry out which defeats the purpose of being able to leave it all day while I am at work.
I would make it again though Holly it was quite tasty.