The slow cooker or crock pot has become one of the most useful appliances in the kitchen for every family. The slow cooker has gained much popularity due to the many benefits of using it. The slow cooker can help to prepare a great variety of delicious food. There are many slow cooker recipes widely available to provide more choices of the types of dishes you can prepare using the slow cooker. By simply following the recipes, you can cook many types of delicious meals for your family everyday.
The best benefit of using the slow cooker for cooking is that the dishes it prepares are nutritious. This is because mainly fresh, wholesome ingredients are used in the cooking. The ingredients are cooked at a low temperature for a long period of time, thus they become extremely tender and delicious. As there is little evaporation, the food will not dry out. The natural juices from the meats and vegetables are retained in the pot, thus, the cooked food are nutritious as well as tasty. Hence, if you are looking for healthy food, using the slow cooker to cook your meals is a way to attain it.
Although using the gas stove, electric burner or grill are fast and efficient methods to do cooking, these methods require attention and supervision. For example, if a piece of meat is left unattended on a hot grill, it will become charred. If stirring is not done regularly while simmering tomato sauce in a pot, sticking and burning will occur at the bottom of the pot. Similarly, if a tray of butter cookies is placed in a heated oven, the cookies will blacken if they are not removed on time. Hence, we see that although these methods are fast but they require monitoring and the food items need to be stirred, flipped or turned. The advantage of the slow cooker is that it is able to do the cooking without any human intervention. The cooker takes the heat and indirectly applies it to the food so that the food cooked slowly and evenly. As the slow cooker uses low heat, the food is not burned without stirring.
Due to the fact that slow cookers are safe, easy to use, and require no attention while cooking, people who use it save much time and effort in cooking their meals. Nowadays, many working adults avoid cooking because they are either too tired after a long day of work, or they have no time to do so. The slow cooker provides them with the convenience of being able to work and still can enjoy eating home-cooked food without having to spend time in the cooking process. In the morning before leaving for work, they can easily place all the food ingredients in the slow cooker and set it on low. By the time they come back from work in the evening, a tasty, nutritious, home-cooked dish will be ready for them. They can choose to add a salad or whole-grain bread to the dish and it will form a complete meal. Thus, by using the slow cooker, people can spend their time at work, in school or anywhere enjoying some recreation, and still have the opportunity to eat nutritious food.
During hot weather, when using the stove and oven for cooking may increase the heat in the surroundings, the slow cooker provides a good alternative. Furthermore, the slow cooker is an economical appliance to use for cooking. It uses as little electricity as a 75-watt light bulb and substantially less energy as compared to an electric oven.
As you can see from the above, crock pot cooking has many benefits. If you wish to enjoy fully the advantages of slow cooker cooking, it is best to equip yourself with a book of slow cooker recipes. It can provide you with a great variety of ideas so that you can prepare delicious and sumptuous meals everyday. For more information, please visit Slow Cooker and Slow Cooker Recipes [http://www.internetbizcenter.com/crockpotrecipe/index.htm]