Customer Reviews

101 Things to Do with a Slow Cooker

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I love this cookbook! After owning a crock pot for 6 years and using it only once, I alsmost sold it in a garage sale. Thank goodness I found this cookbook. I used to be so overwhelmed at dinnertime when I was so worn out from all the kids at home and the housework that I never could get a good dinner made. Now I wake up in the morning and throw my dinner in the slow cooker. When dinnertime rolls around, I just have to make sure we have a side dish (easy enough) we can sit down to a good meal.

Some reviews pointed out that many of these recipes are obvious and unimaginative. Well, for someone like me, who has no imagination left at the end of the day, these recipes are perfect. Good, nourishing meals for my family who may have otherwise ended up with Pizza Hut AGAIN.

First the positive: This Cookbook has some very simple, easy recipes. The majority of recipes are dump and go. The majority of recipes require ingredients that most people have on hand- cream of mushroom soup, chicken, etc.

If you have never really used your slow cooker, this is a great beginner book that will help you explore the wide range of meals you can make in a slow cooker.

Now the Negative: I bought this cookbook expecting some different types of recipes-However, most of the recipes in this cookbook are unimaginative and easy to think of without a cookbook. In fact, I would say that there are a majority of them that I have already made without picking up a cookbook.

If you have already used your slow cooker quite a bit and if you are looking for something a little bit different, this is probably not the cookbook for you. There are a few recipes I had never tried and a few combinations I hadn't thought of in this book. However, I don't think I would suggest you buy this cookbook for only one or two recipes.

I think this is a fine cookbook and if you decide to buy it, just be forwarned, the recipes are very simple and very easy and if you have used your slow cooker very much, very unimaginative.

I've reviewed cookbooks on slow-cookers before but this one has quickly become one of my favorites. The recipes are divided into various categories including beverages, dips and fondue, soups, and stews, beef, chicken, pork, and desserts.
The book starts with 22 helpful hints for cooking with a slow cooker. The actual recipes follow and there are a lot of really good ones.

For example, I don't generally like pot roast but there is a recipe for cola roast that is really good. It also has some unusual recipes like peanut butter fondue, or Sante Fe cheese soup. Not only are there unusual recipes but many good recipes that one would not normally associate with a slow cooker. For example there are recipes for French Dip sandwiches, Italian chicken and mushrooms, sweet and sour pork, carrot cake, and pineapple upside-down cake.

The only thing that I would like to see is the cooking time put at the top of the recipe with the ingredients instead of buried in the recipe instructions. This is particularly important with slow-cooker recipes because they can require anything from half an hour to twelve hours or more of cooking. It does have a nice plastic cover to make it easy to wipe off and food matter that might get on it. One of the best slow-cooker cookbooks around, 101 Things to Do With a Slow Cooker is highly recommended.

The beauty of a slow cooker is that you can dump things in it, go out, and come home to dinner! Further simplifying things by using "ingredients" like condensed soup, pie filling, and cake mix is not only insulting, but unhealthy. Unfortunately, most of the recipes in this book rely heavily on prepared foods (Scalloped Chicken calls for 1 box of scalloped potatoes, 1 can of chicken, and water). The recipes that shine are the ones (such as Cranberry Pork Roast and Almond Chicken) that use basic ingredients instead of prepackaged foods.

This is a great book! I use it at least once a week. The chicken dishes are very simple & taste great. I really like the fact that many of the dishes call for frozen,boneless skinless chicken breasts(like you buy in the bags at the warehouse clubs).That's right,use them with out thawing! Mama's Italian Chicken & Creamy Italian Chicken are family favorites. The pork chop dishes come out fall apart tender. The only dish I won't recomend is Cowboy Soup. It was awful!No flavor.However,one bad dish out of 101 isn't bad odds.By the way I have taken many of the dishes to potlucks & people go & buy the book because they love the food so much. I should ask for a comission! LOL

The design of "101 Things to Do with a Slow Cooker" grabbed my attention right away. It's small in size, only 5"x7", with a coil binding that makes it easy to fold back or lay flat. One of the best physical features is the plastic front and back cover protectors. I was very excited by this and thought "This is going to be a great cookbook."

Flipping through the pages I came to a different conclusion: that I wasn't going to like anything. This was due to the first three recipes being virtually the same other than one ingredient. I felt cheated by the title.
These could have fallen under one recipe with a note for variations. Continuing on it amazed me how little text was in this book for ingredients and for directions. I put the book aside for a week due to lack of
interest.

A couple weeks ago, I decided the least I could do was give some of the recipes a try before I wrote a review. After reading thus far I think you will be surprised with the results, I know I was.

Out of the 18 recipes I tried, only one received a rating below 6. I rated each recipe according to my standards. The highest rating was 7. Each recipe was rated for the following: availability of ingredients, clarity of instructions, ease of prep, husband factor, taste, reheatabity, and freezability. One point is awarded for each area. Any area that didn't pass is in brackets. Anything with an extra number was doubly good in the taste category.

Quick Stew-6 (doesn't reheat well from freezer)
Tortilla Soup-8
Broccoli Cheese Soup-8
Beef & Mushrooms-7
Lasagne-8
Sweet and Sour Beef-6 (bland)
Shepherd's Pie-7
Chicken & Rice Casserole-7
Scalloped Chicken-8 (used with Cajun chicken)
Whole Cranberry Chicken-8 (better with dark meat)
Tater-tot casserole-8
Lemonade chicken-5 (husband factor, taste)
Orange chicken-6
Polynesian pork chops-7
Ham & potatoes-7
Triple rich chocolate cake-9 (gave an extra point for taste. Mmmm)
Pineapple upside-down cake-7

A lot of the recipes involved a lot of pre-packaged items but I'd expect the cook would have the common sense not to live off the recipes in this cookbook. They are not for everyday use but for the busy homemaker on a tight schedule. Some of the recipes are high in fat content but substitutions could be easily made. If you are rushed for time or just feeling lazy this little book is a time saver. The greatest surprise was being able to put a cake mix in the slowcooker. Who knew? The intro has two pages of helpful hints if you haven't used a slowcooker before. The book is sectioned into: Beverages (which I think is a worthless section), Dips & Fondues, Soups & Stews, Beef, Chicken, Pork and Desserts.

You'll notice I didn't try anything from the beverage, and dips and fondues section. My living arrangements don't warrant making a crock pot full of hot chocolate or dip. With any cookbook people generally don't use over half of the recipes. I tried 1/3 of the recipes and would use all but one of them again

Review Originally Posted at http://www.linearreflections.com

I have prepared six of the receipes and they all turned out very tasty. I was impressed with the simplicity of the receipes and how quick and easy it is to prepare them. Of all the crockpot books I have this is the best.

I first started to use my crockpot as a newlywed more than three decade ago. Now as as emptynester I use it just as much. My adult kids are always hungry when they come to visit and I'm always prepared! Our favorites are cranberry pork roast, holiday ham, and hot spiced cherry cider. I also use by slow cooker a lot on Sundays and it's great to come home from church to great smells from the kitchen. It makes Sunday so much more relaxed for me. The directions on this book are clear and the results are great. The fact that the authors suggest side dishes takes all the guesswork out of what's for dinner. My college freshman daughter took her own copy of the book to college with her! I recommend this book to busy mothers, emptynesters or anyone else who values their time and appreciates a delicious home cooked meal with a minimum of time spent. Buy it and enjoy!

This is the perfect cookbook for the busy, on the go, working man/woman. The recipies are so easy to understand, require little or no preparation, and cook all day while you work. The best thing is to come home to a hot, ready to eat meal. My personal favorite recipies are the Triple Chocolate Cake, and the Chicken Tortilla Soup. Both of these are a real hit at my house! What a great book, and I have met both of the authors, and they are such neat, down to earth people who have the working man/woman in mind!

I wanted to love this book because I needed it to be every bit as good as I imagined it to be. It's not. What is it? It's heavy on the salt, preservatives and other ingredients that abound in pre-packaged mixes and bottled sauces/dressings that you should avoid, anyway.

To my way of thinking, a slow cooker is for the preparation of healthy meals that you can toss together and find finished when you get home from work instead of using a feast of chemicals found in those boxes and bottles. So, when a recipe tells me to use an entire bottle of Teriaki sauce -- yes, an entire bottle -- then I have to say, NO WAY! This is just wrong. You might as well buy one of those awful frozen dinners from the supermarket and be done with it.

I don't like to rain on any author's parade, but couldn't there be 101 recipes that include meat, fresh or frozen veggies, seasonings, wine, tomato paste, broth, etc. used creatively to make a quick and healthy meal? I hate to harp on the same thing, but my doctor would have a stroke FOR me if he heard I dumped an entire bottle of Teriaki into a slow cooker and served it up. It tastes awful and is awful for you.

I am hoping for a revised edition of this book using more fresh ingredients without the chemicals and loads of salt. I'll have to do without using this book for anything I might eat.

Not really recommended.