Customer Reviews

Slow Cooker Cooking

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Background (why you might care what I think): I love/live to cook without deadlines and time limits, but I am also extremely busy, so I finally bought a slow cooker to save time, sure, but also to time-shift my prep time, so that my family could eat Boeuf Bourguignon on Wednesdays, at 7pm, without also having to go visit their daddy in the psych ward at 8pm.

All of the slow cooker books I found at first called for (always): frozen vegetables; (often) cans of soup; (far too often) "liquid smoke." Sure, I tried them, and some were certainly teenager-pleasing, and weirdly interesting in their own way, but I would prefer a little less convenience in exchange for more authentic recipes.

So, this book delivers exactly that. As I write, my family is collapsed in a heap after GORGING on Ms. Brody's bourguignon. It took me a full hour to prep, but next time I'll save 20 minutes and considerable mess by browning the meat before marinating (I'll also double the recipe!) Over time, I'll doubtless make other changes until I get the recipe exactly the way I want it, but that is true of any recipe in any cookbook. Too many duck recipes? This is a cookbook, not the Constitution! I've made two of the duck recipes so far, with no sighting of an actual duck anywhere, and I've been delighted with both.

So, this is a nice little book, full of welcome ideas. However, when one can get (say) 400+ pages of Daniel Boulud for about the same price, it becomes a rather expensive, slim volume. I have lived with it for a month now, and I am nonetheless quite happy with it. What follows are some of my further observations:

The "Pantry" section is excellent, probably the core of the book. The black bean and chickpea recipes effortlessly deliver fresh-cooked beans ready for use in anything. For example, the total working time to transform a pile of raw chickpeas into an catering-size vat of hummus is about 15 minutes.

The infused oil recipe is a bit hit-and-miss. However, the idea itself is great. The addition of an oil thermometer and a partially-closed lid quickly transforms the cooker into an accurate scientific apparatus, capable of very precise, effortless infusions. Try infusing olive oil with lemon zest next time you need your senses stimulated (then use the oil in a bread recipe, next time you need your whole house stimulated :-)

If your cooker is big enough (oval, preferably) The lamb stew with potato and feta crust can be economized and much improved by using a well-trimmed 1/2 leg. Let it cool when done, then shred the meat off the bone by hand.

The Chicken Merlot with Mushrooms is wonderful, with the mushrooms still crisp after cooking for 4 hours. Rather too much liquid, though (true of many of the recipes here).

The Morroccan Chicken with Prunes & Couscous is my favourite so far, but it would better served with plain couscous and a separately-cooked side dish, as the flavour is otherwise too intensely uniform.

Only one significant gripe (apart from the price): The layout designer sometimes sacrificed utility for artsiness, unnecessarily spreading some recipes across three pages, with little or no indication that there is more to come.

I am a working mother and a relatively accomplished cook who bought this book with great enthusiasm and I have been moderately disappointed. The "Pantry" section of the book is really useful, and I have made several of the recipes with wonderful success, but the rest of the book falls short of the standard set by her introductory chapter. Many of the recipes are clearly not written with the needs of a working person in mind (ie recipes that cannot be assembled the night before or require alot of prep work), which is an inconvenience I would gladly tolerate for a tasty meal, however, having made 4 or 5 of her recipes now, I must admit I have been at least a little disappointed with all of them. I have also used Donna-Marie Pyles "America's Best Slow Cooker Recipes" and have had much better success, both in terms of taste and convenience.

When you think of "slow cooking" you might imagine a full day of cooking, yet really with slow cooking, you can get out of the kitchen for most of the cooking time. The most delightful thing about slow cooking is that you don't have to worry about burning something on the stove top and you can hardly ruin a meal even if you let it cook way over the suggested cooking times.

Evenings are fun times to use the slow cooker to make a stock. Often in the past, I found the cooker invaluable for making chicken stock while I was happily sleeping. With Lora's new book, I finally learned how to make a delicious vegetable stock. She recommends roasting the vegetables first and this adds more intensity to the stock. You can roast the vegetables, then toss everything into the slow cooker and then head off to bed while the cooker does all the work.

You will find recipes for chicken and vegetable stocks in the pantry chapter. I highly recommend you make these stocks for the recipes. A powdered or base stock does not do the recipes justice. If you are vegetarian, you will enjoy the fact that you can substitute a vegetable stock for the chicken stock in many of the recipes.

One thing I noticed with some of the recipes was the times seemed a bit short. I would take the times that say "2 hours" with a pinch of salt. I doubled those times and the recipe worked much better. I also found you could leave the stock on high heat all night and let it go way over the recommended 6 hours. I left the vegetable stock in the cooker for 10 hours and it was even more flavorful.

Before you start a recipe, check to see if you have to make another recipe first! If you need to make a recipe for "Duxelles" before making the stuffed mushrooms, Lora gives you the page number. You don't have to stand in your kitchen staring at the page and wondering where you are going to find duxelles (dook-SEHL). You simply turn to page eleven and see that in fact, you are only making a thick paste used to flavor sauces, soups and other mixtures. It is just mushrooms and shallots and Lora shows you how to make this paste in the slow cooker.

Many of the recipes are gourmet, but that is what makes cooking fun. Lora used to work in a French restaurant and it shows! There is also a definite Italian flair to many of the recipes. In the recipe calling for "cipollinis" you will have to look for the bulbs of the grape hyacinth and they are used in Italian cuisine. You could substitute pearl onions. I also found it difficult to find baby zucchini where I lived so I just used regular sized zucchini and cooked the soup a bit longer.

While this book is written for cooking at home, you will feel a bit like a chef when using a hand-held immersion blender to transform vegetables and stock into a satiny smooth soup right in the cooker.

If you have never tasted a homemade soup, you owe it to yourself to pull out that slow cooker. It is very satisfying to make homemade soup and it is so delicious. Most of the recipes in this book say to season to taste. You add the salt and pepper at the end. In a way, I wish she had given a basic measure of the salt and pepper, but if you are trying to cook with less salt, you will like the fact that you can add just enough for your own taste.

Many recipes include a "Variation" or a "Note." If you can't find herbes de Provence, Lora shows you how to make it yourself. Lora also includes fun headnotes so you feel that you know her better. "I wandered into an Indian grocery store in my neighborhood and perused the shelves for an ingredient I hadn't tried before. Tamarind paste caught my eye....." and so this is how the recipe for Tamarind Sweet Potatoes came into existence.

You will especially like the design of this book. It has a beautiful blue cover and the binding will last a long time. The index is well organized, although it is easy to find anything you are looking for just by flipping through the 200 pages. There is not a color picture to be found, yet that does not seem to detract from the book. I like the artsy style of the layout with a light gray border at the top of each page and a slow cooker design element running through the book. You will find recipes for appetizers, soups, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, pasta, breads, grains and desserts.

Using smoked Gouda cheese in the Smoky Stuffed Chicken Breasts might give your mother's slow cooker a bit of a shock but it sounds delicious to me! Your slow cooker might just become indispensable! I am really looking forward to making the Vanilla Ice Cream recipe in which you make the base in the slow cooker in order to infuse the cream and sugar with vanilla essence from a vanilla bean.

Tonight I am serving the Cream of Zucchini Soup that is quite good with a sprinkling of paprika and a few toasted pumpkin seeds. I added 1 teaspoon of seasoning salt to the soup. You might prefer more or less salt. I just took a taste and the flavor is just superb. The color is an almost mustard yellow and the texture is smooth and creamy.

While you are making the soup, you could also make some bread in your bread machine. After all, Lora is famous for her bread baking skills.

~The Rebecca Review

I pre-ordered this book and waited with great anticipation, being a big fan of Lora Brody's other cookbooks. I plan to try a few of the recipes but I was, overall, a bit disappointed with the content; only 3 chicken recipes but 7 for duck? And several recipes involve ingredients I've never seen (even living in 3 large cities); cipollini onions, anyone? The techniques used look very good; none of that old method of tossing all ingredients in the crockpot here. I'm definitely interested in the author's recipes that involve putting your crockpot insert into the oven or microwave, since I've never tried either. I have a feeling that most of these recipes may not appeal to my family of six, but perhaps this was never the author's intention. If she wanted to venture to the opposite end of the culinary spectrum from usual crockpot recipes, she certainly succeeded.

Finally, a slowcooker cookbook with recipes that sound GOOD! I have been valiently trying to find some recipes that appeal to me(and yes i tried the Rick Rodgers book -- those recipes required way too much work) and this book has 'em! I agree with the reviewer before me that there are too many duck recipes, but every cookbook has plenty of things to skip over. This book has carmelized onions and ideas for using them, baked garlic, again with ideas for using it, hummus, several recipes for dried beans & lentils, risotto,scallops, lamb, and stocks in addition to stews, brisket, and deserts. It works for me!

... I was excited to find a slow cooker book that did not use canned soup or onion soup mix and was willing to put put in some extra prep time up front for a superior meal.

While I greatly enjoyed browsing through the book, I found actually using it to produce hit and miss results. So far the score is Hits-1, Misses - 3. Extremely disappointing given the amount of time I invested in prep work. I have found several misprints e.g. cook on high, instead of low; incorrect measurments for ingredents, which definitly contributed to the poor results.

A large percentage of the recipes are for duck which we don't eat. Given I fell "victim" to the missprints in the chicken and beef recipes, I don't have the confidence to swap other items for the duck.

This book may be wonderful for very experienced cooks who require a recipe only to obtain a bit of inspiration but it was a disappointment for me.

I ignored all the reviews the came before it and bought this book. Like the others I was disappointed when it arrived.

If you are looking for a book to help you make simple but amazing meals for your family this is not the one. Although it does contain about 5 recipes for entrees that are easy to prepare, delicious and don't use canned soup, four of these same recipes can be found online. All of the others require so much prep or such arcane ingredients that they aren't suitable for everyday cooking.

I think to appreciate this book, you have to stop idealizing the crock pot as a device to make life easier and instead see it as a means to elevate your gourmet cooking. If braised beef tongue sounds impressive or you think you could get into waiting 12-14 hours for your onions to perfectly carmelize than perhaps this is the book for you. Otherwise like me you'll have to keep waiting for the perfect crockpot cookbook

I've made 3 or 4 recipes from this book now - the only one that turned out was the caramelized onions, which were wonderful, but how could one screw that up? I had thought that perhaps my idea of what tastes good was just different from the author's, but after reading some of the other reviews here I see it's not just me.

My expectations aren't usually all that high for crock-pot books, but Lora Brody has such a good reputation that I was expecting more than usual. I even tried one recipe twice thinking I must have made a mistake - it was worse the second time. Oh well.

I was disappointed enough to be inspired to write my first-ever Amazon book review. I guess that's something!

I have never written a review before but just saw that this book (which I am buying for my mum and friends for Christmas) was only rated 3 stars and I couldn't understand why. As far as I am concerned this is the best crock pot cook book out there - the recipes are simple to follow, always turn out exactly as shown and are delicious. The sole recipe I have served at several dinner parties to much acclaim as with the 'lamb you can eat with a spoon'. I cannot recommend this book more highly and I looked at several crock pot cookbooks that were really boring.

When I try a new recipe I have never done before, I get nervous. But EVERY recipe from the book has come out totally amazing. The directions are clear and the results are more gourment than the boullion cube and gravy garbage in other slow cooker cookbooks.

As another review said, there are many recipes for duck and things that are easily found in my neighborhood. However there are excellent recipes like the Morroccan Chicken with Prunes, Chicken with Wine and Mushrooms, and Horseradish Potroast that continue to amaze my husband and guests with minimal effort. Last night I made the Honey glazed Ribs but substituted beef for the pork. AMAZING!

My only negative comment is that there aren't more crockpot books by the same author.