Wednesday, March 31, 2010
McClatchy Newspapers
Richard Strausz of Southfield, Mich., owes his newfound slow-cooker passion to his co-workers and a turkey breast recipe.
After Thanksgiving, Strausz, a teacher at Shrine High School in Royal Oak, Mich., was lunching with co-workers when talk turned to turkey.
“While someone in the group said Thanksgiving turkey was good, another said this slow cooker turkey breast is the best,” he says.
As Strausz, 62, heard about the three-ingredient recipe, he thought, “I can do this.”
Up until then, Strausz says, his slow cooker was used only for the occasional chili or soup dish. Now, thanks to that turkey recipe, he uses it for much, much more.
The recipe called for a bone-in turkey breast, a packet of onion soup mix and one can of whole cranberry sauce.
“I put it in the slow cooker and thought, ‘This isn’t right; this is going to be bad,’” says Strausz.
But once he got a whiff of the dish, he was sold.
And so was his wife, Brenda Strausz, 60.
“I came home to the most wonderful odor,” she says. Now, she refers to her husband as the Crock-Pot king.
Slow-cooker recipes generally are effortless, and these days folks are finding new tips and techniques to give slow-cooker foods a flavor boost. For example, Strausz prepared a beef stew with an interesting twist: It had cinnamon, butternut squash and apples.
There are a host of new cookbooks, many Web sites (more than 1 million consumers visit www.crock-pot.com each year and 60 percent of those are searching for recipes) and even a blog packed with flavorful slow-cooker dishes.
In fact, some of the dishes Richard Strausz has cooked up came from Stephanie O’Dea’s blog, http://crockpot365.blogspot.com. According to the blog, O’Dea set out in 2008 with a new year’s resolution to use her slow cooker every day for one year and blog about it. The blog drew some 15,000 visitors a day and turned into a book, “Make It Fast, Cook It Slow” (Hyperion Books, $19.99).
Among Strausz’s favorites from the blog is a root vegetable dish, which, he says, “is astoundingly healthy, and it serves 12. “
And he has also learned a lot of tips.
One of the best techniques Strausz discovered is placing strips of foil inside the slow cooker, down one side and up the other, when making a meatloaf.
“It’s a way of keeping the fat away and using the foil as handles to lift out the meatloaf,” he says.
Slow cookers have been around for 39 years and 86 percent of American households own one, according to Jarden Corp., which now owns Rival Co., and the Crock-Pot brand.
Rival first unveiled the Crock-Pot, a trademark name, in 1971 at the National Housewares show in Chicago.
Since then, the appliance has undergone a host of changes in size and design. The latest is a 6-quart rectangular, stainless steel model with a programmable timer. It retails for $60.
SOME TIPS FOR MAKING IT SLOW
Here are a few tips for slow-cooker success from www.crock-pot.com and the Free Press Test Kitchen:
Prep the recipe the night before and store it in the slow cooker’s ceramic insert only if the recipe doesn’t have any raw meat or poultry; if it does, add those just before turning on the slow cooker.
Never use the insert over direct heat; it will break. Always make sure the insert is half-full, but no more than two-thirds full, to avoid spillovers once the liquids heat up.
Brown the meat before adding to the insert. This makes the meat look better and sometimes taste better and also removes a lot of the fat.
Don’t lift the lid. You lose at least 20 minutes of cooking time when you lift the lid.
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 of cooking. Cooking them longer could make them mushy.
When converting recipes to a slow cooker, the amount of liquid may need to be reduced because the liquid does not evaporate in a slow cooker like it does on the stovetop.