Slow Cooker Reviews and Recipes

Buying a slow cooker can be a great investment. I am a big fan of stews and sauce based recipes few a few reasons:

1. Hassle free cooking, just put in your ingredients and leave it to cook.
2. Slow cooking gives time for the ingredients to develop flavour, giving it a richer taste.
3. If using meat in your recipes, it makes it wonderfully tender, lamb just melts in your mouth and it can make the cheapest and toughest beef lovely and tender.
4. Electric slow cookers use a small amount of electricity compared to a standard kitchen oven, so it saves you money.
5. Slow cookers can be left on in the morning before you go to owrk, then when you come back you have a delicious meal waiting for you. Please remember to be careful if you going to leave a slow cooker unattended.

The Hamilton Beach slow cooker has an LED display making it easy to program and to monitor cooking times,

Product Features:

• 6 quart capacity which caters for large meals, or great for freezing leftovers.
• Has 3 cooking modes, programmable, manual and probe.
• Once food is cooked, it automatically turns to keep warm mode making sure food is not overcooked.
• The probe mode is great for cooking meat and fish. It comes with a probe thermometer that is inserted into the meat or fish, when it reaches the desired temperature it stops cooking and just keeps it warm. Pretty neat hey?
• Made from high quality stainless steel which is built to last and looks attractive.
• Glass lid which makes it easy to view food whilst cooking.

Zesty Cranberry Chicken

You will need to following:

• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• 12 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, or 6 skinless chicken breasts.
• 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries. If using frozen make sure they are defrosted first.
• 2 tablespoons unrefined brown sugar.
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard powder.
• 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
• 1 cup dry white wine.
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch blended into 2 tablespoons of cold water
• Salt & pepper to season.

Cooking Method:

1. Place the onions and cranberries into a slow cooker.
2. Arrange chicken over the top, try to spread evenly and not overlap.
3. In a bowl, mix together the sugar mustard, vinegar and dry white wine, then pour over the chicken.
4. Cook on a slow setting for around 7 hours until chicken is tender.
5. Add the blended cornsatarch with water into to cooker, add salt and pepper to taste, then cook on high heat until sauce thickens.
6. Serve with boiled vegetables for a healthy low fat meal.

Tomato Salsa & Sour Cream Chicken

You will need to following:

• 4 Skinless boneless chicken breast cut into halves.
• 1 Pack taco seasoning mix
• 1 Cup of ready made tomato salsa, or make your own.
• 1/4 cup light sour cream.
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed into 2 1/2 tablespoons of cold water.

Cooking Method:

1. Coat your slow cooker with cooking oil, or use an oil spray.
2. Add the chicken breasts.
3. Evenly sprinkle taco seasoning over chicken
4. Add the salsa on top.
5. Cook on a low setting for 6-8 hours.
6. Once cooked add the cornstarch mixture, set temperature to high and cook until sauce becomes thicker, then finally add the sour cream and serve.