Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Family Favorites

Comments

1. S. Whitworth says:

   February 24, 2010 at 7:09 pm

   Just the very cover of this book will make your mouth water. I took it to work and all my cubicle buddies were impressed with all the treasures contained. This book is by none other than the well know Beth Hensperger! I own several of her bread books and adore them. That alone pleases me, but the book really has some wonderful recipes that you and your family will love digging into. Beth covers some helpful hints in “Slow Cooking 101″. Next is a pleasing chapter on hot drinks and dips. Yipeee! There are some great drinks for fall, winter, and related holidays and dips for all the parties. The cold weather is just around the corner. The most important meal of the day is covered next. Breakfast in a slow cooker? Surely you jest. How does Cheddar Egg Strata sound? It would be hard to just pick one, as they all sound lovely and delectable. I think Irish oatmeal with vanilla and maple is a wonderful thing to make and can not wait to try this. I just need cooler weather for this. The rest of the book covers the kind of food your family will be begging for you to make again. We are talking lunch and dinner. In addition, these are healthy food to serve. If you have a slow cooker, you should also have this book. Add a bread maker and you have heaven.

   Rating: 5 / 5
2. Just Me says:

   February 24, 2010 at 7:49 pm

   Instantly became one of my favorite cookbooks. Meals that are so easy to make, but don’t look or taste like it. You cook these in the slow cooker, so you can throw everything in the slowcookehours ahead of time and be rewarded with a great meal. I’ve use the slowcooker for easy and tasty meals quite regurlarly, but this cookbook offers fancier meals. A real family-pleasing meal.
   Rating: 5 / 5
3. John A. Lefcourte says:

   February 24, 2010 at 10:19 pm

   O.K., I haven’t tried any of the recipes yet. BUT, there are many things that I find disappointing to begin with. Seven pages on drinks? Come on, they don’t need to be cooked in a crock pot, nor do the dip recipes for another eight pages. Four oatmeal recipes? When I use a crock pot I want recipes with a minimum of steps. I don’t mind browning meat and wilting onions but I don’t want to use ovens or prepare ingredients by using the crock pot earlier.

   Reading the recipes only about one third look appealing to me. If I had been able to browse this book in a store I would not have purchased it.

   I will rewrite my review once I’ve tried some of the recipes.
   Rating: 3 / 5
4. D. Leschke says:

   February 24, 2010 at 10:41 pm

   This is a terrfic Slow Cooker book.
   
   It contains a lot of tips and useful information along with tons of recipes.

   As someone who has used my slow cooker now and then for typical slow cooker dishes, it’s exciting to see so many meals I’d never considered using the slow cooker for.
   
   Being able to put it together and forget about it has great appeal, especially in the cooler months.

   After reading through this great book, I’ve realized how nice it would be in the summer months as well.

   This book will replace many small, but specific crock pot or slow cooker books I already had.
   
   I’d recommend this book to everyone.
   Rating: 5 / 5
5. B. Christensen says:

   February 25, 2010 at 1:00 am

   I own no less than three other “gourmet” cookbooks for the crock pot (or “slow cooker”) and none of them are perfect. Call it the limitations of the medium, but I’m still looking for the one cookbook that captures all the essence of the crock pot (throw in the ingredients and forget about it!) while still delivering delicious meals with every recipe. That being said, I think “Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker” comes closest of any I’ve tried so far.

   Here’s the trick, though: be prepared to do some “side prep” with many of the dishes you are making from this book. One simple example includes the recipe for “Smoky hand-pulled pork on a bun with cabbage-carrot slaw”. With this particular dish, you are only using the slow-cooker to prepare the meat that is used in the sandwiches. My family loves pulled pork sandwiches, which I usually do with our electric water smoker using a pork shoulder or butt and an entire weekend. This recipe delivers great results and vastly simplifies the process by using the slow cooker overnight to produce the meat, which ends up being very close to the home-smoked version because of the Liquid Smoke ingredient. But, like I said, there’s some additional prep work to do to make this recipe, including pulling the pork apart and making the slaw (I know – duh! – but we’re talking about a slow cooker here, and I think some peoples’ expectation is that it functions solely as a “one-pot meal” device). Another example is the Thai Beef and Pasta Salad, which is a good colloquial take on the classic “Yum Neua”; it too only uses the slow cooker for a relatively small portion of the preparation process, but delivers a fun and interesting meal that even a lot of kids would like.

   Overall, the recipes are fun and inventive – if you are tired of eating beef stew and kielbasa with sauerkraut from your slow cooker, I recommend you give this book a try. There are a few minor nits -for example, I don’t like the fact that the TOC does NOT include a listing of the recipes – only the chapter headings – so you have to flip through all the pages to find out that the Thai Beef salad recipe is in the chapter entitled “Slow Cooker Main Dish Salads and Sandwiches”. This makes flipping through the book for quick ideas a bit of a hassle (you can’t easily skim the names of recipes for something that sounds good), and unfortunately, unless you know the names of the recipes, the index in the back isn’t much help.

   Five stars for inventiveness and “workability” of the recipes – the ingredients match up well, are interesting, and the preparations make sense and are easy to follow for a novice cooker (or easy to skim through if you are advanced). Minus one star for the lack of a recipe listing. Recommended!
   Rating: 4 / 5