Take It Slow

The tips, tricks, and recipes that taught me to love using my slow cooker

- CHELSEA ZIMMER

SLOW COOKERS and I have a complicated relationship. Growing up, they were the workhorse behind my family’s weeknight pot roasts and cozy chilis, dishes I still love today. But as someone who creates recipes for a living, I’ll admit to turning up my nose at slow cookers because I associated them with a set-it-and-forget-it cooking style—basically, not “real” cooking.

But why blame the appliance? No other piece of kitchen equipment offers the perk of walking away from it all day and returning to a hot meal. For busy families, there’s real value in that. If I expect my slow cooker to whip up flavorful meals with little effort and no thought, I realized, that’s on me, not my slow cooker. This fall, I decided to show my slow cooker a little respect. I got reacquainted with it, testing various recipes to see what the appliance was good at and not so good at.

In general, the dishes that will turn out best in a slow cooker are ones that benefit from moist-heat simmering: Low-and-slow cooking transforms tough, inexpensive cuts of meat into melt-in-your-mouth pot roasts, like in my Dr Pepper–Braised Pot Roast (recipe p. 107), and draws out the spices in a fragrant chicken pho broth (recipe p. 108). The slow cooker’s gentle simmer and steady temperature produce evenly cooked beans that are perfectly creamy and coax out the natural sweetness from starchy and hearty vegetables that can handle a long cook, such as eggplant, parsnips, and cabbage. You can even convert your slow cooker into a water bath to prepare jars of perfectly cooked Sticky Toffee Overnight Oats (recipe p. 108).