Slow Cooker Revolution [Paperback]

The Editors at America's Test Kitchen (Author), America's Test Kitchen (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2011

Who doesn't like the idea of throwing ingredients into a slow cooker and coming back hours later to a finished meal? Too bad most slow cooker recipes deliver mediocre results you'd rather forget than fix again. A team of ten test cooks at America's Test Kitchen spent a year developing recipes, and what they discovered will change the way you use your slow cooker.

Did you know that onions garlic, and spices should be bloomed in the microwave for five minutes before they go into the slow cooker? This simple step intensifies their flavor and requires no extra work. Did you know that a little soy sauce mixed with tomato paste adds meaty flavors to almost any stew and can often replace the tedious step of browning the meat? And do you know the secret to a moist slow-cooker chicken? Start the bird upside down to protect the delicate white meat from drying out.

The 200 recipes in this family-friendly collection deliver a revolution in slow cooking like only America's Test Kitchen can!

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Boston Common Press (February 15, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933615699
• ISBN-13: 978-1933615691
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (314 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Appliances

More About the Author

America's Test Kitchen is a 2,500 square foot kitchen located outside of Boston. It is the home of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines and is the workday destination for over 3 dozen test cooks, editors and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes until we understand how and why they work and arrive at the best version. We also test kitchen equipment and supermarket ingredients in search of brands that offer the best value and performance. You can watch us work by tuning in to our public television show, America's Test Kitchen.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

918 of 956 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, A Useful Slow Cooker Cookbook January 26, 2011

By mayfayre TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The "new" name is "slow cooker" but most of us know the device as a "crockpot" because that's the name it was first marketed under a couple of decades ago. If you're like me, you got one because you thought, "Hey, I can put in the ingredients in the morning and have a tasty meal when I get home from work - cool". Then you found out that only certain recipes seemed to work well in the crockpot, er, slow cooker. You bought crockpot cookbooks, and found while many of them were beautifully designed with multiple and elaborate fonts, blank spaces for notes, line drawings of cute little collections of vegetables, the recipes either contained about 20 different ingredients or else the recipe required so much pre-browning, pre-sautéing, post-blending, post-broiling of the ingredients that it would just be quicker to cook the darn recipe once you got home from work.

I am really happy to say that "Slow Cooker Revolution" is the first sensible slow cooker cookbook in my collection of them. The book is very well designed. There is a page devoted to each recipe, and most recipes have a picture of the finished product. There is a list of ingredients, and from what I saw, everything there is available in my local supermarket. Each recipe starts off with a paragraph entitled, "Why It Works", in which the authors explain the choices behind certain ingredients or methods and why they work better than others. The recipes are clear-cut and easy to follow. Each recipe also an additional segment - either a "quick prep tip" or a "smart shopping" hint or an "on the side" short recipe. They also recommend products in these segments that have been determined to be the best in their other test processes (if you've ever watched "America's Test Kitchen" on PBS you'll know the tests I'm talking about); I like that they name names of the products.

As I read through the recipes, I found myself thinking, "that sounds really tasty" and more importantly, "I can do that". The recipes include both standards and favorites, you know, the kind of food that you would actually cook at home (or order in a favorite restaurant) and that your family would actually eat. The recipes are not just reprints of older crockpot recipes; they have reworked some basics and created totally new versions of others. There is not a lot of elaborate pre-preparation in these recipes. Sensibly, they recommend using the microwave to pre-cook some of the vegetables to both make sure they'll cook thoroughly in the recipe and to release more of the aromatics into the recipe. We're talking like five minutes in the microwave, so that's no big hardship. Some of the recipes do call for browning or sautéing certain meats or vegetables; I suppose there is no real way to avoid that since the name of the game is adding flavor to a process whose innate nature would tend to lose the flavor of some ingredients due to the long cooking time. There are a number of recipes highlighted as "Easy Prep" - they are the ones that are basically "throw everything into the slow cooker and turn it on".

What I also like about this cookbook are the extras, the pages that highlight things you should know about the ingredients you're using, e.g. "All About Broths", "Pasta 101", "All About Beef", "All About Using The Microwave And The Slow Cooker", etc. Very useful. This cookbook is definitely going to be a keeper for me, and I might be buying some other copies for the other cooks in my family. This is a good and useful gifting item.

250 of 263 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great slow cooker cookbook January 27, 2011

By Grimmy VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

So why another slow cooker book? Well, this is from America's Test Kitchen - some crazy organization that tries to find the best way of preparing all kinds of meals. Unlike other slow cooker recipe books, this one is more authoritative. For instance, unlike other slow cooker cookbooks, it gives recommendations for the "best" slow cooker - well, they did test seven of them, and set up a whole rack to have two dozen running for their tests. It also has tips for what brand ingredients tasted the best (what's the best barbecue sauce to use? maple syrup? canned tomatoes? corn tostadas?), or what shape pork loin to buy, or how to make a tidy burrito. Or how to make the recipes taste more "meaty" by using secret ingredients such as ... soy sauce! Interesting.

Each recipe starts with a description and rationale of why it's done this way ("Why this recipe works" section). For example, what tastes are important about the dish? How did they replicate the barbecue feel and taste for their ribs? How did they duplicate the key flavors of French Onion Soup or Cassoulet? What worked and what didn't? This is always informative and helps you understand the rationale behind the recipe.

Their goal was to include lots of "easy prep" recipes for the "time-pressed home cook", and these are identified as such in the chapter listings. Some require microwaving aromatics mixed with chopped onion, etc. to be mixed into the pot, or microwaving beef bones to add flavor. However, there are some that require more complex prep. The Chicken Gumbo, for example, has you preparing the roux first, by roasting and stirring the flour then baking it for 45 minutes. Others require cooking and whisking of certain ingredients before adding to the mix. Jerk chicken requires some steps in the oven to char the chicken after slow-cooking, and so do some other dishes, for the most impressive results. Some dishes require 5 to 20 minutes waiting or fiddling around with after slow cooking (some dishes make you create a little foil tent while waiting), so be aware of this when planning.

There are recipes for soups, stews, braises, chilis, barbeque, pasta sauces, meatballs, meatloaves, enchiladas, tacos, casseroles, eggs, brunch, side dishes, desserts, etc. However, something like Mashed Potatoes does take 4-6 hours to cook, so you may need to plan or have more than one slow cooker.

The recipes cover a wide variety of cuisines - Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Mexican, French, etc. - so you shouldn't get bored. This book is a great addition to your slow cooker library.

297 of 314 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Misses the Mark March 10, 2011

By S. WIlliams VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm a big fan of Cook's Illustrated. I get their flagship magazine and Cook's Country and watch both America's Test Kitchen versions faithfully on PBS. I'm also a frequent buyer of their cookbooks and have found many of my all-time favorite recipes in their pages.

Unfortunately, after making three of the recipes from "Slow Cooker Revolution," I'm not sold on this particular effort. All were OK, none spectacular, and, as far as I can tell, just about every one previously published. (A cheat often used by Cook's, but still annoying for its most loyal readers.)

My major complaint--and it seems to be in most of the recipes, not just the three I've attempted so far--is that Cook's takes what is best about the slow cooker, it's convenience (set it and forget it one-pot meals), and throws it out the window by requiring countless pre-cooking steps (far more than just browning meat or sautéing vegetables), that often dirty multiple pots, pans and bowls before you ever even get the ingredients into the slow cooker itself. There's also a good bit of post-cooking in many of these recipes, along with mid-cooking steps/additions that means you're constantly babysitting the slow cooker even after getting the ingredients going. Not terribly practical for a device specifically designed to cook while you're not here.

If I'm going to use a dishwasher full of dishes, what's the point of dragging out the crackpot just to do the heating? Often the recipes I've read and tried seem like they'd be better served being made in a Dutch oven and then cooked in a low oven, thus saving multiple steps and plenty of dishwashing. Kind of defies basic cooking logic.

Sorry Cook's, I just can't recommend this one.

EDITED TO ADD: After seeing a trend with these reviews to dismiss negative reviewers as submitted by lazy cooks who just don't get it, I wanted to point out that I'm someone who sincerely enjoys the process of cooking, and a Slow Food devotee. I put a great deal of effort into using organically, locally sourced, seasonal ingredients in my day-to-day life. I rarely, if ever, use ANY processed food. I bake bread from scratch several times a week. I would never even consider using a cake mix or a condensed soup base. I'm not really looking for shortcuts.

My problem with "Slow Cooker Revolution" isn't so much the prep, but the fact that the recipes, despite all the extra steps, aren't very good. If the end results were outstanding, I wouldn't really question what went into the creation, as many meals I happily prepare take hours and hours to complete. Unfortunately, that just isn't the case from what I've seen here, which seems to be Cook's effort to shoe-horn better, oven or stove-top recipes into a slow cooker with lackluster, at best, results. Does the multi-step beef stew recipe in this cookbook taste better than some meat and potato cubes tossed into the cooker along with canned broth and onion soup mix and left to sit for 12 hours? Most definitely! Does it taste as good as my favorite stove-top to oven recipe that requires approximately the same amount of effort? Nope. Not even close. The same with the turkey chili and short rib recipes I've tried. Other recipes, including Cook's traditionally cooked and previously published versions, are vastly superior to the results you get using the "Slow Cooker Revolution" way. And THAT is my problem with this cookbook.

I've long been of the theory that there is very little a slow cooker does better than a low oven and good cast iron pot. Nothing I've tried, or read, in "Slow Cooker Revolution," has made me think I'm going to be pulling my slow cooker out of the pantry more than once or twice a year, at best.