12 Things Your Slow Cooker Can Do That Nobody Told You | Seniors Living Alone

I have a confession to make. For the better part of 10 years I thought my slow cooker did exactly one thing. Stew. Maybe a chili if I was feeling adventurous. It sat in the cupboard, came out when the weather turned, made something brown and soft, and went back in again. Then one afternoon I put a whole chicken in it, on a whim because I didn't want to heat the oven. And what came out was so tender it fell off the bone when I looked at it. That was the day I realized I'd been using a very capable machine to do one small job. So today I want to show you 12 things this pot can do that most people never try. Some are proper dinners. Some are the sort of thing you'd swear needs an oven. And a couple of them are going to surprise you outright. All of them are worked out for one person or for one person who'd like a few days of good eating out of a single afternoon. And do stay with me until number nine because that one costs you absolutely nothing. It uses a part of number one that most people throw straight in the bin and it might be the most useful thing in this whole video. Let's plug it in. Number one. A whole roast chicken. No oven, no basting, no standing in a hot kitchen in July. And the meat comes out so tender you can pull it apart with a fork. Buy a small bird, three to four pounds, which fits a standard six quart cooker with room to spare. It must be fully thawed before it goes anywhere near the pot. This one isn't negotiable. Frozen poultry warms too slowly in a slow cooker and spends too long at temperatures where bacteria are happy. So thaw it in the refrigerator for a day or two first. Pat the skin dry and season it well all over with salt, pepper, and paprika. Now the trick that makes this work. Don't add any liquid, not a drop. A chicken releases a surprising amount of its own juice and if you pour broth in you'll poach it instead of roasting it. Instead make a rack. Crumple three balls of aluminum foil and set them in the bottom or lay down thick slices of onion and a couple of halved carrots and rest the chicken on top of those. That lifts the bird out of the juices so the bottom doesn't go soggy. Lid on, cook on low for six to seven hours or high for three to four. It's done when a thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh, not touching bone, reads 165 degrees Fahrenheit. No thermometer, the leg will wiggle loosely in its socket and the juices will run clear. The skin will be pale rather than crisp. If that bothers you, slide the whole thing under a hot broiler for four or five minutes at the end and whatever you do, keep that carcass. I'll tell you why at number nine. Number two, pulled pork. If you've only ever had pulled pork from a restaurant, making it yourself will feel like getting away with something. It takes 10 minutes of work and eight hours of ignoring it. Buy a pork shoulder, sometimes labeled Boston butt, about two pounds, which will give you six or seven servings to freeze. Look for one with a good marbling of fat running through it because that fat is what melts down over the long cook and keeps the meat from drying out. A lean cut will disappoint you here. Rub it all over with a mix of brown sugar, paprika, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, pressing it into the surface. Set it in the cooker and add only half a cup of liquid, broth, apple juice, or even plain water. That's it. People drown pulled pork and wonder why it tastes washed out when the meat is going to release plenty of its own juices over eight hours. Cook it on low for eight to ten hours. High will work in four or five, but low is genuinely better here because collagen needs time and gentle heat to melt into softness. You'll know it's ready when a fork twisted into the middle turns with no resistance at all and the meat falls into strands. Lift it out onto a board, pull it apart with two forks, and discard any large pieces of fat. Then, and this is the step people skip, spoon a little of the cooking liquid back over the shredded meat. That's where all the flavor went. Add barbecue sauce after shredding, never before, so you can taste as you go. Number three, meatloaf. A slow cooker meatloaf comes out more moist than an oven one because it steams gently in its own covered pot instead of drying at the edges. Here's the setup that makes it easy to get out again. Tear off two long strips of foil, fold each into a band a few inches wide, and lay them in the pot and across with the ends hanging over the sides. Those are your handles. Without them, you'll be trying to lift a hot soft loaf out of a deep pot with two spoons and it will not go well. Mix one pound of ground beef with an egg, half a cup of bread crumbs, a quarter cup of milk, a small grated onion, salt, and pepper. Mix it with your hands only until it comes together. Overworking it packs it tight and makes it rubbery. Shape it into a free-form loaf, a bit narrower and taller than you'd make in a pan, and set it on the foil cross. Cook on low for six hours or high for three. It's done at 160 degrees Fahrenheit in the center. Brush the ketchup or barbecue glaze over the top for the last 30 minutes only. Any earlier and the sugar in it goes dark and bitter over a long cook. Let it sit for 10 minutes before you lift it out so it firms up enough to hold its shape. Then use those foil handles and lift it straight onto a plate. Slice what you want tonight and the rest slices beautifully cold for sandwiches tomorrow. Number four, lasagna. Yes, really. A proper layered lasagna in a pot with no oven at all and the noodles cook right in it. Use no boil lasagna noodles and break them to fit the shape of your cooker. They will not fit neatly and that's fine. Nobody sees the inside. Line the pot with a foil sling first, the same trick from the meatloaf, so you can lift the whole thing out and cut clean slices. Layer in this order and the order matters. Sauce first on the bottom, always, because dry noodles against the hot base will scorch. Then broken noodles, then a mixture of ricotta with an egg and a little parmesan, then mozzarella, then more sauce. Repeat until you run out and finish with sauce and cheese on top. Use a little more sauce than feels right because those dry noodles need to drink something and there's very little evaporation in a covered pot. Cook on low for three to four hours and no longer. This is the one recipe here where you can absolutely overcook it. Go eight hours and you'll have a pan of soft paste. You want the noodles just tender when you slide a knife in. Then turn it off and leave the lid off for 20 minutes before you cut it. That rest is the difference between a neat slice and a puddle on the plate. Number five, baked potatoes. This is the one that sounds too simple to bother with until you realize you can have a hot baked potato waiting for you without turning on the oven for one potato. Scrub the potatoes and dry them well. Prick each one four or five times with a fork, which lets steam escape, and rub the skins with a little oil and salt if you like a seasoned skin. Wrap each one in foil and stack them in the pot. Add no water at all. They bake in their own steam. Cook on low for seven to eight hours or high for four. They're done when you squeeze one with a towel and it gives easily under your thumb. A knife should slide to the center with no resistance. Now, one safety note that matters more than people realize and it applies to any foil wrapped potato, however you cook it. Don't leave cooked potatoes sitting in their foil at room temperature. If you're not eating one right away, take the foil off and put it in the refrigerator. Foil creates a sealed airless pocket and a warm potato sitting in one is exactly the environment where harmful bacteria can develop without any smell or taste to warn you. Unwrap and chill and there's nothing to think about. Do four or five at once. A cooked potato in the fridge is the start of a dozen quick suppers. Number six, creamy mac and cheese. Real macaroni and cheese made with dry pasta straight in the pot, no boiling, no draining, and it comes out creamier than the baked kind. Butter the inside of the pot generously first, right up the sides, or the pasta will weld itself to the crock. Add one cup of dry elbow macaroni, one can of evaporated milk, half a cup of regular milk, a tablespoon of butter, and about two cups of shredded sharp cheddar. Evaporated milk is the secret here and it's worth buying specially. Its lower water content and concentrated proteins keep it from splitting the way ordinary milk can over a long cook. Now the important part. Cook on low for one and a half to two hours only and stir it once or twice along the way. This is a short recipe, not an all-day one. Pasta and dairy both suffer over long heat and at three hours you'll have something grainy and stuck to the sides. It's ready when the pasta is tender and the sauce is thick and glossy. If it looks a little loose, leave the lid off for ten minutes and it'll tighten as it stands. If it's too thick, a splash of warm milk stirred through brings it right back. Eat it straight away while it's at its silkiest. This isn't one to leave on warm for hours. Before we get to the rest, let me give you the handful of rules that make everything work in one of these pots. Nobody explains these when you buy one and they're the difference between a machine you trust and one that sits in the cupboard. First, how full you fill it changes everything. A slow cooker wants to be at least half full and no more than two-thirds. Under half? And there isn't enough mass to hold steady heat, so food scorches at the edges and cooks far faster than the recipe says. This is exactly why cooking for one in a big six-quart pot goes wrong so often. If you're regularly making single portions, a small three-quart cooker will serve you far better than a large one. Second, vegetables go on the bottom always. It's the opposite of what you'd guess, but root vegetables like carrots and potatoes take longer than meat does in a slow cooker, and the base is the hottest part. Meat on top, vegetables underneath. Third, leave the lid alone. Every time you lift it, you let out the steam that's doing the cooking, and it takes 20 to 30 minutes to build that heat back. If a recipe doesn't tell you to Fourth, dairy and pasta go in at the end. Milk, cream, cheese, sour cream, and noodles all break down over long cooking. Stir them in during the final 30 minutes. Fifth, cut the liquid. A covered slow cooker barely evaporates anything, so a stovetop recipe converted directly will come out watery. Use about half the liquid you'd normally use, and remember the meat and vegetables will add their own, and two safety habits worth keeping. Don't let food cool down in the pot after it's finished because the crock holds heat for hours and keeps the food in exactly the temperature range you don't want. Serve it, then chill the rest promptly in shallow containers, and don't use the slow cooker to reheat leftovers either. It warms too gradually. Use the stove, the oven, or the microwave, and bring things to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Now number seven, a week of shredded chicken. This isn't a dinner so much as a head start on five of them, and it's the single most useful thing I do with mine. Lay two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs in the pot with no bones and no skin at all. Thighs stay juicier if you're reheating them across the week. Add one cup of broth, no more, along with whatever seasoning suits where you're heading with it. Plain salt and pepper keeps it flexible. A jar of salsa sends it toward tacos. Cook on low for four hours or high for two until it reaches 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Longer than that isn't better with lean chicken. Overcooked breast goes dry and stringy no matter how much liquid surrounds it, so set a timer rather than leaving it all day. Shred it right there in the pot with two forks and let it sit in the cooking liquid for 10 minutes afterward. It drinks that liquid back up, and that's what keeps it moist all week. Portion it into containers with a spoonful of the liquid in each. It keeps three to four days in the refrigerator and it freezes well for months. Tacos on Monday over rice on Tuesday stirred into soup on Thursday and a sandwich on Friday. Number eight. Caramelized onions. Here's one that isn't a meal at all, and it might change how your cooking tastes more than anything else on this list. Properly caramelized onions take about an hour of standing at the stove, stirring, watching them so they don't catch. Almost nobody does that on a weeknight. In a slow cooker, they take no attention whatsoever. Slice five or six large onions thinly, which sounds like far too many, but they cook down to roughly a quarter of their volume. Pile them into the pot, add three tablespoons of butter or olive oil and a good pinch of salt, and stir them about so they're coated. Cook on low for eight to ten hours. Somewhere around hour four, you'll look in and see a pot of pale onions swimming in liquid, and you'll think it isn't working. Keep going. That liquid is the water leaving them, and once it goes, the sugars finally start to color. For the last hour, prop the lid open a crack with a wooden spoon. That lets the remaining moisture escape so the onions can properly brown instead of stewing. They're done when they're deep golden brown, sweet, and jammy. Freeze them in an ice cube tray, then tip the cubes into a bag. One cube dropped into a soup, a pan of rice, an omelet, or spread on toast with cheese, and it tastes like you did something clever. Number nine, chicken stock, the one I promised you. Here's the payoff. That chicken carcass from number one, the one most people throw away, is worth about a gallon of good stock. It costs you nothing but the electricity. Put the picked over carcass in the pot, bones, skin, and all. Add a chopped onion, unpeeled is fine, a couple of carrots, a stalk or two of celery, a few peppercorns, and a bay leaf. Keep a bag in your freezer for vegetable ends, carrot tops, celery leaves, onion skins, and tip that in too. Cover everything with cold water, up to about an inch below the rim. Cook on low for eight to twelve hours. Overnight is ideal, and you'll wake to a house that smells wonderful. Two things to get right, don't salt it. Stock gets concentrated when you use it later, and an unsalted base lets you season whatever you're cooking properly. And don't let it boil hard. A slow cooker on low won't, which is precisely why it makes clearer, cleaner tasting stock than a pot on the stove. Strain it through a sieve and discard the solids. Chill it in the and the fat will rise and set into a firm layer on top that lifts off with a spoon. If your stock turns to jelly when it's cold, that's not a fault. That's the gelatin from the bones, and it means you did it properly. Freeze it in one cup portions. Every soup you make from here on will be better than one made with a bouillon cube. Number 10. Overnight steel-cut oats. Waking up to breakfast already made feels like a small kindness to yourself, and steel-cut oats are the one grain that genuinely benefits from hours of gentle heat. Steel-cut oats are the chopped whole grain, not the rolled kind, and they take half an hour on the stove. Rolled oats will turn to glue overnight, so do use the steel-cut ones. For a small batch, use a water bath, which sounds fussy but takes a moment. Put a quarter cup of steel-cut oats and one cup of water or milk into a heatproof bowl or a smaller dish. Set that inside the cooker and pour water into the pot around it until it comes halfway up the sides of the bowl. That gentle indirect heat stops a small quantity from scorching against the hot crock, which is the usual complaint with overnight oats. Cook on low for six to seven hours. Butter the inside of the bowl first, and it lifts out clean in the morning. Stir well when it's because it settles, then top it however you like, which brings us neatly to the next one since these two were made for each other. Number 11. Stewed apples. This is the simplest thing in the video, and one of the most useful. A soft, warm, spiced apple compote that costs pennies and goes with almost anything. Peel and chop six apples into rough chunks. A firm variety holds its shape, and a softer one collapses into sauce, so pick according to what you want. Into the pot they go with two tablespoons of water, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and a squeeze of lemon. That lemon isn't for flavor so much as color. It keeps the apples from browning. You'll notice there's no sugar. Cook slowly. Apples release their own sweetness, and after four hours they taste sweeter than you'd believe. Add a spoonful of honey at the end if your apples were tart, but taste first. Cook on low for three to four hours. They're done when a spoon goes through a chunk with no resistance. Leave them as they are for chunky or mash them with a fork for applesauce. Spoon them over those oats from number 10, alongside pork, over ice cream, or into a bowl on their own with a little cream. They keep a week in the refrigerator. Number 12. Rice pudding. We'll finish with an old-fashioned pudding that most people assume needs constant stirring on the stove and doesn't. Butter the pot well, and I mean properly, right up the sides, because milk and rice will stick given the chance. Add half a cup of short grain or arborio rice, three cups of whole milk, a third of a cup of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Short grain rice matters here. Its starch is what makes the pudding creamy, and long grains simply won't do the same thing. Cook on low for two to three hours, stirring once or twice if you're passing by. Watch it toward the end rather than walking away because the edges are the first place it'll catch. It's ready when the rice is tender, and the whole thing is thick and creamy, but still a little loose. It sets up considerably as it cools, so pull it while it looks slightly runnier than you want. Off the heat, stir in a teaspoon of vanilla and a knob of butter. If you like it richer, whisk an egg yolk with a few spoonfuls of the hot pudding first, then stir that back in. Tempering it like that stops the egg scrambling. A dusting of cinnamon, warm from the pot on a cold evening, and you've made a proper pudding without standing over anything. And that's 12. 12 things from a machine most of us use for one job, and I hope at least three or four of them were new to you. If nothing else, take this away. That pot doesn't only make stew. It roasts a chicken, it bakes a potato, it makes lasagna, and then it turns the bones you'd have thrown out into a freezer full of stock. For anyone cooking alone, that's a lot of good food out of an appliance that asks almost nothing of you in return. Tell me in the comments which ones surprised you most. And if there's something you make in yours that I haven't mentioned, do share it because I read every message, and I've learned some of my best ideas from you. If cooking well for one is what you're here for, subscribe and stay with me because there's a new one every few days. Next time we're tackling something every single one of us deals with. Half an onion, half a pepper, half a can of beans, half of everything left over from cooking for one. I'll show you exactly what to do with all of it so nothing goes soft in the drawer again. Until then, take good care of yourself and enjoy your dinner.