Customer Reviews

Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever with More Than 400 Easy-to-Make Recipes

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever" has many excellent recipes and meal ideas, is well laid out, clear, and nicely photographed. Whether it will prove to be the "best cookbook ever" for you probably depends on how you use your slow cooker. I usually turn to mine on busy days when I have little time to cook and will be gone most of the day. I want to quickly combine a few ingredients with minimal fuss, clap the lid on, walk away, and come home eight or ten hours later to a ready-to-eat meal. Unfortunately, many of the recipes in this book require extensive preparation, cook for only three or four hours, and involve the slow cooker almost incidentally.

For example, the Asian Honey Wings, although they sound delicious, are all but finished before the slow cooker even makes an appearance. The wings are cooked in the oven while the sauce is prepared in a bowl, and the sauce and wings are then combined in the slow cooker and heated through. The book suggests serving them from the slow cooker to keep them warm. Heating and serving an already cooked dish from a slow cooker hardly qualifies as a slow-cooker recipe, and I don't really need a book to know that serving from a slow cooker is a good way to keep food warm.

Another typical example is a casserole for which the cook must first make 2 cups of cooked rice; chop several vegetables; have 3 cups of cooked, diced chicken at hand; and grate 2-1/2 cups of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. While the rice simmers on the stovetop, the cook sautés the vegetables in separate steps, then removes them to a bowl and adds several more ingredients to the pan to create a sauce. The rice and some of the vegetables are then combined with half the sauce in one bowl, and the chicken and other vegetables are combined with the rest of the sauce in another bowl. Finally, the rice, chicken, vegetables, and cheese are layered in the slow cooker and heated through. Frankly, if I have time for this level of involvement and kitchen mess, I'm just going to go ahead and cook a meal. Once again, the slow cooker seems to be involved only so this can be called a slow-cooker recipe.

A recipe for enchiladas calls for 17 different ingredients and 10 cooking steps before it is ready for the slow cooker - and then cooks only 3 hours. The cook can neither save time by using the slow cooker nor leave it unattended for the day.

There are some interesting suggestions, such as making snack mix or spiced nuts in the slow cooker in a way that is much simpler than the usual oven recipes. There are good dip recipes; again, no surprise that a slow cooker works well for warm dips, but new ideas for dips are always welcome.

I find myself using this cookbook as more of an idea book than a slow cooker reference. Leafing through, I find a recipe for something I like - cabbage rolls, say - see that it's just as much work as making them in the oven, and decide to make them soon - in the oven. One more thing: All of the recipes are sized for 6 to 10 servings; if you need to adjust the recipe to make fewer, that will add one more step.

I have used slow cookers since the 70's and read a lot of slow cooker books. Most books are too simple or too complex, this one is just right. There will be lots of flavor with moderate start up time investment. I read about 50 cookbooks a year, and am a great peasant cook. I really like to cook simple great food.
This book is really an outstanding slow cooker book. The prep time is reasonable, the ingredaint lists are reasonable,,,, heavy on fancy mushrooms for flavor, the 400 recipes give you a lot of continents to play around in.
Many of these dishes could also be made in a casserole and baked faster.
I was really impressed with this book and marked 15 things to make this winter.
True, its not a diet cooker book, but I can reduce fat where I choose and substitue as needed. This is a real full flavor cookbook. Low fat is a joke anyway, I have nursed for 25 years and seen tons of fat people on low fat food.
If you only buy one slow cooker book, this should be the book.

I love slow cooker cooking and in my opinion, the best slow cooker recipes use fresh, high quality ingredients (as opposed to lots of canned and boxed ingredients) that are easily prepped (if you have to spend 30-45 minutes prepping the dish, it stops being a convenience). The recipes in this book strike that "just right" balance for me. This book includes a huge variety of recipes using all sorts of different proteins, vegetarian entrees, side dishes, drinks, appetizers, etc. You will be hard pressed not to find several recipes that you would like to prepare right away.

I have two gripes with this book:
1. there is no nutrition info provided for the recipes. Some of the recipes are clearly not diet friendly but many of them are -- it would be nice to have the information available.
2. the print color and paper color used in this book make it very difficult to read. I like the layout -- every recipe is on one page, with the ingredients listed in one column and the prep information in another column. However, the ingredients are printed in sage green type on off white background and the prep instructions are in brown type on the same paper background. It is very difficult to read and I doubt that anyone who really uses a cookbook, in the kitchen, while preparing food, looked at this design very carefully. The best cookbooks have large, clear, easy to read instructions that can be read and re-read quickly while working in the kitchen. This book is unfortunately almost unusable to me in this respect. it's disappointing because I really like the recipes but I would find myself hesitating to cook from this particular book because of the extra work involved in just reading the recipes.

I love this cookbook!

This book does a wonderful job of going beyond the predictable meals you find fit for the slow cooker. The meals are complex in a good way that I think is well worth the extra 5-10 minutes of prep; it is the difference between a regular midweek meal and a meal you'd be happy to serve at a dinner party. The recipes are creative without being difficult and there are so many of them! I like that it has an appetizer, drink and dessert section too -- it really covers a lot of bases.

There is a great suggestion of preparing the meal's ingredients in crock-pot liners and freezing them until needed. With a new baby on the way, this is a PERFECT solution for us to get some ready meals in the deep freeze before the baby shows up without having to rely on frozen foods and the preservatives they contain. I plan to make and freeze some casseroles too, but I love that slow cookers are so time forgiving; much easier to throw a liner in the cooker in the morning and it cooks all day while I figure out what to do with a newborn :)

I really liked the book's layout too. Each section shows an overview of what is contained in the chapter and on what page, very handy. The photos are wonderful, I wish there were more of them! They look like meals you would be DELIGHTED to come home to at the end of a long day. If you have a rice cooker too, this would be a one-two punch on maximum payoff for minimum effort.

From a design standpoint, I would have had the cover's title be colored green instead of orange. In person, the orange is hard to see well on the burlap background; the green in the peas would have really popped with a green title. I think the spine looks great on the shelf and the back cover is also well coordinated. The colors really invoke the mood of comforting, home-cooked meals.

Overall, this slow cooker cookbook is head and shoulders above the ones I already own, by far.

No doubt about it: this book has over 400 great recipes for the slow cooker. With a few exceptions, the recipes are designed to be cooked in a 5-7 qt.-size cooker, but a lot of them can be easily reduced if you need a smaller quantity.

I mention that because, as a single person, cooking recipes designed for 8 people is usually a bit more than I want to tackle. So far, I've tackled a dozen or so recipes from this book, all but one of which I cut in half, and the results have been wonderful.

Take, for example, the Chicken Braised in Cider with Apples and Bacon (pg. 125). I reduced everything by half, and made this in a 4-qt pot. It turned out great, and was fabulous served with noodles tossed with poppy seeds and butter.

Another one that fared well in smaller quantity is the Pork Tenderloin Stuffed with Cranberry Wild Rice with Cranberry Sauce. Wild rice, orange zest -- I added a few dried cranberries to the stuffing -- stuffed into butterflied pork tenderloin, then cooked in a cranberry sauce, port, and orange sauce. Super yummy.

The recipes I've tried are very easy, take little time to prepare, and produce good results every time.

Now for a few quibbles. Others have mentioned the type color and size, and I second their complaint. What WERE they thinking? It makes it more difficult to work quickly between book and prep station, having to stop and re-read things to make sure I "got" it.

I would also have liked nutritional info for the recipes. As someone who is trying to eat a more healthy diet, I really appreciate it when I can make more informed choices. I can usually make a reasonable educated guess (I've been at this diet thing for awhile), but nutritional info would make my life a lot easier.

Finally, if you're the kind of cook who needs to see a color picture of a recipe before you can "visualize" it, you'll be disappointed. There are a few color photos, but not many.

Overall, though, this is a VERY good book with a lot of variety. It's definitely gift-worthy -- why not pair it with a 6-qt slow cooker for that new bride/groom or for Christmas? Crockpot 3060-W 6-Quart Round Slow Cooker, White

What astounded me when I received this book was how thick it is and how many different recipes were included. Many crock pot/slow cooker cookbooks will include recipes for pot roast and have three or four different types of pot roast. This book would not count each variation as a new recipe. When it says there are 400 recipes in this book, there are 400 different recipes in this book. This is a very thick cookbook.

The other thing that astounded me was the sheer number of different types of recipes. Desserts, appetizers, soups and stews and so on and more.

Most of the recipes require easy to find, probably on hand in your kitchen type of ingredients. The recipes are all very easy to follow. The ones I have tried are very yummy with great results.

This is a lot of fun to read and look through as you are planning dinner. I would buy this cookbook.
Enjoy.

Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever is a huge, comprehensive, soft cover cookbook. There is over 400 recipes and really covers everything from soup to nuts. The only thing missing would be salads, but who would expect that in a slow cooker book? If you have no experience with using a slow cooker, you will want to read the introduction. It really covers all aspects of using a slow cooker. The author states that many people complain about food cooked in a slow cooker because it either has no flavor, or there is so much prep work that you might as well finish cooking it without the slow cooker. She stated that the goal of this book is to find a place in the middle - flavorful without excessive prep time. She did state, "I have tried where appropriate to streamline the prep so that it is minimal, but if I instruct you to brown, or stir, or lift the top off the cooker, it is because the finished dish will benefit from that step." She does go on to explain why those steps are needed.

The cookbook is well organized. Each chapter begins with a list of the recipes included with the page number on which they are found. Some chapters, such as the meat chapters, are subdivided by type and/or cut. There is also an 18-page index, so recipes should be easy to find. There are two sections of pictures, clearly labeled, with the name of the recipe, but no page number (the index should help there). I love pictures in a cookbook and this book doesn't have very many. I'm sure if it were written as a cookbook with a picture for every recipe, it would have to be 1000 pages or wouldn't have as many recipes. This is a reasonable trade-off. I like reading cookbooks and this one was an enjoyable read. I have lots of new ideas for things to try. Time to dust off the old slow cooker

Diane Phillip's "Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever" is a comprehensive, easy to use, crock pot cookbook. The book's approach is to help sophisticated cooks with a crockpot use this convenient kitchen tool to prepare regular meals. Not crockpot specific meals, per se, but things that you might usually cook on the stove top or in the oven, done in the crockpot instead.

After a few weeks of using the cookbook I'm impressed. Unlike most crockpot cookbooks that I've seen, this cookbook helps you to cook everything--from vegetable sides to whole huge pies of meat like lamb shoulder to desserts and appetizers--in the crockpot. The cookbook has a TON of recipes broken into different categories like soups, risotto and pasta, meats, party items, etc. Almost everything is made totally from scratch, making this book ideal for someone like me who tries to eat minimally processed foods or for someone who is turned off by the copious amount of canned soups and frozen vegetable called for in most crockpot recipes. The book also has a comprehensive index, which makes it easy to find a recipe for any random item that you might have in the house--for example, I just used the book to make a lovely roast beet salad.

If you're a moderately experienced cook with a crockpot who is looking to expand your use of this helpful tool, this is a good book for you. The recipes aren't the easiest, but they are very good and worth the effort. If you are a crockpot beginner though, this may not be the cookbook for you.

I have mixed feelings about this cookbook. There are many interesting recipes that I have marked to make, but NOT in my slow cooker. I could give the book a four star rating for its good ingredient combinations, but there are not enough "real" slow cooker recipes to do so--hence the three star rating.

Many of the recipes seem to be forced into the slow cooker method and in that way seem to be almost silly. Surely some come across as ridiculous: Spend 30-45 minutes prepping your ingredients and sauteing or browning in a pan, then transfer to the slow cooker for 3 to 5 hours, when you could have finished the dish in 15 more minutes on the stove top. In other words, you could have finished the dish in the same amount of time it will take you to clean your slow cooker after dinner. And do we really need a one-page recipe for baked potatoes in the slow cooker for 3-4(H) or 7-8(L) hours? And why make peperonata in a slow cooker for 4-5 hours, when it can be made correctly in a pan in 10-15 minutes? And why bother making a fake risotto in the slow cooker? Make a different rice dish instead. (And speaking of risotto: Arborio is a short grain rice, not medium as stated with authority in this book.)

I don't think the author gave much thought to what she was claiming in her introduction: "Slow cooker for busy people...Prep a few ingredients in the morning or the night before...balanced between streamlined prep work and full flavor." Who is she kidding? Prep work and sauteing or browning is NOT minimal and is necessary in a majority of the recipes, so don't plan on prepping these recipes at 5am or 6am before you leave for work. The author seems to believe that most people with full time jobs can leave home and be back in 8 hour's time or can stop at home in the middle of the day. Or maybe she is assuming that everyone has a slow cooker with a sophisticated timer...(She doesn't discuss the safety issues of using a timer at all.) And the breakfast recipes need to be started about 4 hours before serving--either get up at 3 or 4am, or have a very late breakfast, because you surely can't prep and fill the cooker the night before and leave your eggs and cream out overnight.

BIG PROBLEM: The author never notes the size of the cooker she used to test these recipes. A major problem arises with the recipe quantities because there is a leeway of 2 quarts in the suggested size of the slow cooker, (usually 5-7 qt.). And, because you should not fill your cooker all the way to the top or less than half way, 2 quarts represents a LOT of space to fill or not fill. So, sometimes--after you've prepared your ingredients--you find that you have too much or too little, or your layering is off. This is not someting you want to happen when you are in a rush to get out the door.... And, if you are trying to use a smaller cooker, adjusting the amounts becomes even more confusing and questionable. How many times do you want to test a recipe before it's "right" for your cooker?

I would have given this book two stars except for the following pluses: There are 18 recipes using lamb; there is a great recipe for poached miso salmon; there are sirloin (including tri-tip) recipes; a Chicago-style italian beef recipe; many, many very nice pork recipes, and several molten lava chocolate cake recipes (I love chocolate lava cakes, but hated the timing of the cooking process between dinner and desert. Now, I can make it in the slow cooker before dinner.)

Other cons: There are 16 color photos in the book, but they do not mention a page number for the recipe. The index is somewhat frustrating: for instance cioppino is pictured in the book, but is only listed as "Sailor's Shellfish Stew" in the index.

I can see this cook book being helpful when you are preparing a many-course meal for a gathering and are trying to juggle space on the stove top and in the oven. Or maybe you don't have an oven. Or maybe, my thinking is off base, and it's just me not seeing the value of, or not being able to take advantage of, the timing of these recipes.

I bought this cookbook for my mother who is 83. She just bought a new crockpot, but didn't have any recipes. I let her know that the book was on its way.
When she received it, she kept trying to find recipes to use, but even with a magnifying glass my mom was unable to read the recipes. In addition to small type there isn't much contrast on the page. They type is either gray or blue. My mom couldn't really tell.
I asked my mom to give the book to some of her younger friends, thinking that it was just her eyesight, but even folks in their 50's and 60's couldn't easily read it.