The enigma that is my crockpot

There was a woman who blogged about making her family dinner every night in the crock pot. 365 nights of crock pot meals. PB could kill me for that, but more likely something bad would mysteriously happen to my crock pot. He's not a big fan of stewed or really tender falling off the bone kind of meat.

I got a crock pot a.k.a slow cooker for my birthday this year from my BFF. The crock pot is back in vogue as more families are dual income and don't have the time to prepare dinner at the end of the day. In fact, even big companies are jumping on the crock pot wagon and creating ready to cook, prepackaged crock pot meals to just throw in and turn on the crock pot. It couldn't be any easier.

So here I am, a new mother, finding herself with less time to create the lavish meals I used to prepare (alright, perhaps lavish is a bit exaggerated, but certainly I had more time to cook and enjoy cooking). Now, I have a toddler, pulling at my pant legs, screaming to be picked up one minute and then squirming to get down the next. Not exactly conducive to prepping and cooking over a hot stove. I thought that I'd venture into this unknown territory of crock pot cooking and see what the excitement was all about.

My BFF, knowing that I was contemplating the slow cooker, and who constantly tells me I'm a difficult person to buy gifts for, jumped on this opportunity and presented me with a modern, high end, Kitchen Aid, 7 QT slow cooker. In terms of slow cookers, I had the Mercedes of cookers (although I'm sure it has a better reliability rating "wink"). I went and got some cookbooks from the library and started eagerly planning for my first crockpot meal.

Now here is where the enigma began. I soon realized that most recipes called for a fair amount of prep work before putting it in the pot. Lots of chopping - although this was to be expected, but also browning, sauteing, pre-cooking of other sorts and then to finish it in the slow cooker. This did not seem like a good savings of time. In fact, I started to question why anyone would use a slow cooker because most of the things could be done on the stove or in the oven on low heat. So what was the point? Granted, if I worked outside of the home I most likely would not want my stove on or my oven unattended so from that angle, I can see the importance of the crock pot to the slow cooker enthusiasts.

The other issue I had with the slow cooker was the amount of pre-processed items that would be required. Mostly flavour enhancers, but things I really don't regularly use. Adding cans of condensed mushroom soup, whole bottles of barbecue sauce, flavouring packets and dried soup mixes all seemed rather unappealing.

Back in April, I tried making my first crock pot item - a corn and red pepper soup. Only fresh, whole ingredients and looked tasty from the picture - (I'm very visual when it comes to food). It also required no pre-cooking, just preparation of ingredients and then put into the crockpot. I have to say, that after 8 hours of simmering and some nice heady aromas filling up my kitchen, I was sorely disappointed with the soup. Lack of flavour and body - perhaps a can of cream of mushroom soup could have livened it up. It was completely one dimensional. Disappointed, I decided not to give up on my shiny new gift.

Now that the weather has turned colder and after I have spent the summer doing some research into recipes, I am now embarking on my own culinary adventure to demystify my crockpot. My goals are:

1. To find recipes that require no pre-cooking and thus making it a time saving recipe.
2. To find recipes where the end result is a mixture and balance of complexity, body and flavour.

I have attempted making ribs earlier in the summer, which were no comparison to my slowly smoked ribs on the barbecue but were ok - better than the soup. It also did not require a whole bottle of barbecue sauce. I have also found a beef stew recipe, that does not require browning of the beef and with a little help from our friends Lea and Perrins and their worcestershire sauce, it was surprisingly full of flavour, and tasted as if the beef had been browned. I am convinced that I have also found the perfect cut of beef for stew - blade steak as opposed to the precut mystery stewing beef. The beef was tender, falling apart and full of beefy goodness.

I attempted a chicken noodle soup this evening and shockingly, it was also quite good, albeit on the salty side. I've also got some books on hold from the library that are supposed to contain new and exciting slow cooker recipes. I'm eager to leaf through them and give them a try.

There's hope for my crockpot yet!