Three ways a slow cooker can save
you over winter
Winter is the time for comfort food – warming soups, stews and curries. This is where slow cookers come to the fore. Here are three reasons your slow cookers will save you in winter – recipes included!
While winter in Tasmania can be long and – let’s face it – sometimes a bit miserable, there is an upside we are leaning into. Slow cooking is a secret weapon in the colder months when cosy, warm dishes are what’s called for. They’re also a brilliant time saver, a budget-conscious way to cook, and are a great way to serve up nutritious home cooking to your family, with very little effort.
Here's three reasons why we love getting our the slow cooker:
Time
Slow cookers free you from being tied to the stove making dinner after a hard day at work. Throw in pre-prepped ingredients in the morning before leaving for work and you’ll return home to the delicious smell of a slow-cooked dinner. You’ll earn major domestic Goddess/God points also.
Budget-friendly
Due to its long cooking time, slow cooking is perfect for using cheaper or secondary cuts of meat. Gravy beef, blade roast, chuck steak, venison, wallaby, lamb shanks, bone-in chicken thighs, or pork shoulder are all great proteins for the slow cooker, resulting in mouther-wateringly tender, fall-off-the bone meat. Economical vegetarian ingredients like lentils and chickpeas are also great for slow cooked soups, stews and curries where the long cooking time allows delicious flavours to develop.
Nutritious
The long, slow cooking time in a sealed vessel, where all the cooking liquids are kept in the dish, maintains nutrients and also allows you to pack in more veggies – everything becomes deliciously saucy and enriching.
Recipe ideas for your slow cooker
We've done the hard work for you by searching our recipe archive for our favourite recipes using the slow cooker! They are easy, set and forget type recipes, that will fill the house with wonderful, warming aromas.
Try these slow cooker recipes from Hill Street’s recipe collection:
Smoked Ham Hock Chicken Chilli
Did you know you can even use your slow cooker to make an indulgent hot chocolate?! Try this Coconut Cream Hot Chocolate recipe for something a little sweet and slow, the wait will be worth it!
And, here's our top three slow cooker tips
Slow cooking without a slow cooker
If you don’t have a slow cooker, you can cook slow cooker recipes with a conventional oven and a heavy oven-safe pot or a cast iron Dutch oven. The temperature setting will be between 100C for ‘low’ and 150C for ‘medium’ but this may take some trial and error as all ovens vary. Keep the lid on to retain moisture and heat.
Don’t be tempted to lift the lid!
When those marvellous aromas waft through your kitchen it is tempting to lift off the lid and check how things are going. Because slow cookers cook by concentrating the heat and moisture in your food, lifting the lid unnecessarily lets out some of this heat and moisture. It’s estimated that up to half an hour of cooking time is lost when you lift the lid – so don’t do it!
Beware of beans
Some dry beans need to be cooked before adding to the slow cooker. These are the kidney-shaped beans of all colours, which contain a toxic chemical compound called phytohaemagglutinin, a type of lectin that can cause gastrointestinal distress if consumed improperly cooked. It’s deactivated by soaking the beans overnight and then boiling them for 30 minutes. Slow cooking at lower temperatures may not neutralise phytohaemagglutinin, so it's best to either boil these separately or use canned beans.