With wintertime temperatures lower than last year’s and energy costs among the year’s highest (at least according to my power bill), the house is cold. Almost cold enough to discourage me from cooking dinner on these dark, dreary evenings.
But a hearty dinner is the ultimate winter warmer with the one-pot meal a strategy for keeping prep to a minimum and extending the food’s usefulness over several days. Slow cookers are a classic and much-loved way to go about shortening the time it takes to get dinner on the table by stretching cooking time over the whole day. Slow cookers, energy-sipping appliances that they are, also are a way to cut down on energy use.
While they would seem foolproof, there are a few points to ponder on the slow cooker, aka Crock-Pot. An October story in A la Carte covered some. Here are a few more courtesy of the Detroit Free Press:
Always make sure the insert is half-full, but no more than two-thirds full, to avoid spillovers once the liquids heat up.
Allow enough time. Slow cookers take a while to warm up and, of course, take a while to cook.
Don’t peek. Try not to lift the lid. You lose at least 20 minutes of cooking time when you do so.
Don’t cook frozen meat or poultry in the slow cooker because it will not reach a safe temperature in time to halt bacterial growth.
Add tender vegetables like zucchini, bell peppers and peas during the last 30 minutes or so. Cooking them longer could make them mushy.
Most slow cookers have two settings: low and high. Typically, low is around 200 F, and high is 300 F. But you should not simply translate the recipe to oven temperature following those settings. The slow cooker uses a wrap-around type of heat, and the food is closer to the heat source than it is in the oven.
When converting recipes to a slow cooker, the amount of liquid may need to be reduced because liquid does not evaporate in a slow cooker like it does on the stovetop.
There are other routes, of course, to a one-pot meal using one’s stovetop or oven. Using my Dutch oven Saturday, I braised a leg of lamb in red wine and stock with some vegetables and dried mushrooms. What we couldn’t eat that night became a pasta sauce, taco filling and contribution to lentil stew.
If I had wanted to roast the lamb, I could have used my ceramic tagine, a Christmas gift two years ago from my mother-in-law. The distinctive, conical lid of this traditional North African cooking vessel collects moisture and condenses it back onto the food. One-pot dishes cooked in it, which often contain couscous and dried fruit, also are known as tagines.
Learn more tricks for one-pot meals and sample five dishes that freeze well from chef Sandy Dowling, who has a couple of spots left in her “One Pot Meals Redux” class Wednesday evening at The Willows Cooking School in Central Point. Call 541-665-3020 to register.
Or consider the Jan. 24 “Stovetop Braising” class at The Right Plan in Medford. In the meantime, try this Free Press recipe, a faux tagine of sorts meant for the Crock-Pot.
MCT photo
Slow-Cooker Garlic Chicken
3 pounds chicken pieces, bone in and skin on, patted dry
Coarse salt and ground black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 cup dry white wine, such as sauvignon blanc
1⁄3 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup pearl couscous
Chopped fresh parsley, for garnish
Season the chicken with the salt and pepper. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high. In batches, cook chicken, skin-side down, until skin is golden-brown, about 10 minutes. Turn and brown on second side about 5 minutes.
Combine the onion, garlic and thyme in a 5- to 6- quart slow cooker and season with salt and pepper. Top with chicken, skin-side up, in a tight layer.
In a small bowl, whisk together the wine and flour until smooth and add to slow cooker. Cover and cook on high until chicken is tender, about 3 1⁄2 hours (or 7 hours on low). Cook couscous according to package instructions. Serve chicken and sauce over couscous, sprinkled with the parsley.
Makes 4 servings.
— Recipe adapted by the Detroit Free Press from Everyday Food magazine’s December 2011 issue.
