Most Helpful Customer Reviews
345 of 355 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Robin Robertson Does It Again!, January 21, 2004
This review is from: Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker: 200 Recipes for Healthy and Hearty One-Pot Meals That Are Ready When You Are (Paperback)
Vegan Planet and The Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook are two of my all time favorite cookbooks. I can always count on their easy to follow recipes to produce delicious results. Now, Robin Robertson does it again! I am enjoying my Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook very much. I just got it a week ago and I have already made Seitan Cacciatore, Spicy Black Bean Chili and Old Fashioned Vegetable Soup. I went out and bought a lovely Rival Oval Programmable Stainless Steel 5.5 Quart Crock Pot. You can exactly set the cook time in half hour intervals up to 20 hours and you can set the temperature to high, low or warm. The crock-pot automatically switches to warm mode after cooking is complete so you don't have to worry about burning. The digital countdown shows you how much time is left. The lid fits perfectly on the crock-pot and doesn't let air seep out like some cheaper models. I highly recommend this sturdy and easy to use crock-pot. Now back to the wonderful recipes! The Seitan Cacciatore was a very easy to make a hearty stew. We loved the subtle blend of flavors and the seitan was perfectly moist. I made the Spicy Black Bean Chili in less than ten minutes. The results were fabulous, dark rich spicy black bean chili with red peppers, sweet onion and diced green jalapenos, amazing for such a mind numbingly simple recipe. I am eating the Old Fashioned Vegetable Soup as I type. This soup is so wholesome and tender it simply melts in your mouth. I am a busy vegan who absolutely loves to cook and this cookbook is a lifesaver. No longer will I have to rush home to cook, stopping at a busy grocery store on the way. Instead, I figure out what I want to make in the evening, go to the grocery store after dinner when it is not crowded at all and assemble the ingredients at my leisure. I pop the crock in the fridge until bedtime. I don't want to leave the cooker on when I am not at home, so I just turn it on before bed and when I wake up transfer the wonderful results to the fridge. They have all day to sit and get delicious (most stews are better if given time to rest) and then I reheat when I get home in the evening. It has worked out very easily and the recipes are mouthwatering. Now I can relax while cooking on busy weeknights and I look forward to going to the store rather then rushing. I think crock-pot cooking is miraculous. This cookbook is a huge bargain with 200 recipes for everything from appetizers to desserts, soups, stews, vegetables and everything in between. All of the recipes have vegan alternatives for dairy products and most are naturally dairy free. You cannot get better results both in the minimal effort, easy ingredients and outstanding results then this. Every vegan and vegetarian should give Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson a try!
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234 of 241 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
If only the cooking times were right!, March 10, 2006
This review is from: Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker: 200 Recipes for Healthy and Hearty One-Pot Meals That Are Ready When You Are (Paperback)
I'm not new to cooking by any means, but I am new to slow cooking. I was looking for a slow cooker cookbook that would contain vegetarian, Kosher and/or low-fat or low-salt recipes. The last thing I wanted was a dozen ways to make pork roast. This book fills the bill, in part, in that a lot of the recipes are healthy although no one seems to be watching their salt intake. I realize that this is not the purpose of this cookbook but it would be good if alternatives were available.
The cooking times are way off. The book seems to have been written with much older or less powerful models in mind. The cooking time for dried black beans, for example, is 12 hours on high. This is anything but true -- at least with my model (Rival programmable) it took 4 hours on high. At 12 hours on high, I would have ruined the dish and possibly had a fire hazard.
So the times have got to be updated post-haste. The recipes are interesting and somewhat creative. Personally, I don't want to do too much outside of the slow cooker. I want to throw things in the pot, set it and go to work, and a great number of the recipes have requirements of satellite or preliminary cooking, such as some sautéeing. I don't mind a little of this but not at the beginning of the cooking time. Who wants to fry onions right before work?
A slow cooker is meant for people who are going off to work or elsewhere and want a meal ready when they come home. While some extra work is sometimes needed, it's needed with too many of these recipes. If the cooking times could be adjusted so as to better reflect reality, and the recipes adjusted so as to also better reflect users' needs, my rating would be higher.
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169 of 173 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Tasty Recipes That Need Adjusting, April 25, 2004
This review is from: Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker: 200 Recipes for Healthy and Hearty One-Pot Meals That Are Ready When You Are (Paperback)
I've made three of the chili recipes from this book and, while all were tasty, two had too large a measure of hot pepper ingedients and the third came out too "raw" without much longer cooking. A four-ounce canned of diced hot chiles tastes mild out of the can, but turns combustible after 8 hours in a slow cooker ("Spicy Black Bean Chili"). In the "Chipotle-Kissed Red Bean and Sweet Potato Chili," the canned chipotles in adobo sauce were way too intense unless you used a fraction of what the reciped called for. I'm not talking just chili-lovin' hot here, I'm talking noxiously hot. The "Sweet and Spicy Lentil Chili" recipe specified unsoaked lentils, but the lentils wouldn't soften adequately until the dish was cooked 16 hours or more (the recipe called for eight hours). Also, the Vegetarian Society not only recommends that dried beans and lentils be soaked, but that they be pre-boiled for 10 minutes before adding to the slow cooker, which was not mentioned in the recipes I used. Based on my experience with this book, I wonder if the recipes, many of them close variations of each other, were all adequately tested. I still liked the dishes, however, after adjusting for the problems I mentioned. Keep in mind that taste is subjective and what I think is too hot or too hard may not agree with your assessment. But I've never had this happen three out of three times with any other cookbook that I can remember.
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