Beef Stew

In a Wal-Mart store, a short while ago, I was surprised to see boxes and boxes of crock pots of all sizes, prices, and descriptions stacked for sale - in men's wear yet!

Then I discovered that they were everywhere. Crock pot cooking is enjoying a comeback. In difficult times, the tried and true is revived.

Beef Stew

High Heat Vs Slow Cooking

Cooking meat, using a hot stove top or oven requires the best, high quality cuts of meat in order to produce good results. Lower quality cuts are more likely to result in tough, stringy meals.

Cooking a roast on a lower heat setting for 6 to 12 hours allows you to take advantage of the cheaper cuts of meat. Roasts emerge moist and tender with all of the food values and flavours of the ingredients intact.

Follow the recipe you want to use, placing the veggies on the bottom of the pot, the meat on top of that, and let it do its own thing. You are done.

Most types of bacteria are killed at 140F degrees. Crock pots, by designed, operate at around 240F degrees on low setting, and 300F degrees on high. Crock pot cooking is safe.

It allows you to use the same low and slow method our forefathers used before electrical energy was available. They prepared a pit, building a bed of coals and buried a dutch oven to bubble away for a full day.

Today, you can prepare a wide range of meals in the crock pot, including cakes and desserts. Personally, I like to make my own bread because I can put my own selection of ingredients in the dough - raisins, nuts, fruit, etc, and I know that it is not chock full of trash that I don't need. Bulk food stores are amazing resources for ingredients.

I make a no knead bread recipe, using the crock pot liner as an oven utensil. The first time I put it in the oven at 450F degrees, I removed a very handsome loaf of bread. I also melted the plastic knob on the glass lid - so had to replace it with a wooden one. Just like a man, bumbling around.

Preparing a crock pot meal is very simple. Pick your recipe, load the crock pot according to instructions, calculate you start and stop times, crank it up and go. You can set it on high in the morning and come home to a steaming and delicious meal all ready to place on the table.

Being a senior citizen and a naturally lazy male, I often start the cooker in the late evening. It bubbles away all night and I awaken to my house filled with delicious aromas. I place the cooked food into containers, refrigerate, and I have my meals ready for the day. Simple, lip smackin' good. No fast food on the planet can match the flavour.

The tasty variations are particularly good because I choose to virtually eliminate salt from my diet and use herbs and spices as flavour enhancers instead.

Crock pot cooking is also a marvelous opportunity for family involvement. Loading the cooker is so easy that almost any child can get in there right up to the elbows and help. Good health, lots of giggles, and cementing family togetherness is great "stuff."

I have a small model, over 20 years old that still works just fine. Today, that same model sells for around .00. I bought the new, larger one, specifically to get the bigger capacity, and removable liner, to make my bread in the oven. It set me back .00.

A crock pot draws a very small current as compared to the kitchen range. It is the least expensive, most cost effective major appliance in my kitchen - about 5% of what I paid for the stove. As a senior citizen, that is important to me.

Now you really can shop in the perimeter aisles of the supermarket, where the more healthy and nutritious food lives. You can create serious family meals with the kinds of ingredients that all the health gurus insist you need for optimum health and weight management..

Try one, you'll like it, and you will recover the cost in a very short period of time by using the less expensive ingredients.

Tasty food, minimal effort, and easy on the budget. It just does not get a lot better than that these days.

Slow Cooking in a Crock Pot

Jim Parsons is an author, researcher, project manager, and presenter, who is dedicated to living a healthy lifestyle as naturally as is possible. That is hard to to do today, with the constant TV sales pitches by big business, for miracle solutions to solve everything. Learn to live naturally. Make a little personal effort, save a lot of dollars, and reap the rewards nature intended.

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