I bought a slow cooker today ...

Do you mean he's slow when he cooks, or that his wits are astray? I don't understand . . . slow cooker . . .

It was on sale (Very good price!) And the last one on the shelf. Trouble is, the "how to use it, etc", booklet was missing. (The package had been opened. I'll get back to trader on that.) But given that it was quite a bargain & the very last one left, I thought I'd buy it anyway!

Go msolga, teach this slow thinking man something about Aussie cookers.

Well, Doggy Person, he's a little backward & ...

No, no ... hang on! I'm not certain you actually do know what a slow cooker is. I suspect you must, because I've heard reports that you're a Chef Extraordinaire!

Dutchy, if I was an actual expert on slow cookers (Oz or other) , I'd stitch him up good & proper! Don't you worry about that!

Well, there are a couple of heat settings,thats all you need know. Cooking in a slow cooker is not exactly Physical Chemistry.
1You plug it in
2You fill it with whatever you want to cook
3You set the temp as either "LOW" or "HIGH",go to town for a few hours

Cooking on low will require the most time and cooking on high is essentially boiling the **** to death, so be careful


A reaqlly mistake proof food is SPARE RIBS. (Im a big fan). Ribs are cut into serving sizes off the rack and put in a slow cooker with a good barbeque sauce (Make your own and use plenty of tbasco or govt approved "hot sauce" and molasses and tomato sauce and garlic and pepper and liquid SMOKE) Cook this for about 5 hours we cook ours on the patio and can go away for several hours while it gets done.
The ribs will be very good (Not as good as if you barbecued them but quite acceptable)

Americans often make a big slow pot of baked beans and cook the ribs in with the beans. I dont like this because it all winds up tasting the same.

Stews and soups are good in a slow cooker.

Welcome to the 1970's, next thing youll be getting is a fondue pot. (REMEMBER THEM STUPID THINGS?)

Well, anything that would normally take high temperature to cook (such as taters, carrotses, turnipses, etc.) can be done on a low temperature in a slow cooker (if yours turns out to be like ours, you don't ever want to put it on high, except perhaps, just before serving). Use spices as you normally would, but avoid a heavy hand--cooking all day like that, some flavors can take over everything else.

This is a great way to cook peas or beans, but dried peas or beans still need to soak overnight before you put them in the cooker. If you're going to do dried peas or beans, i'd advise starting them at high temperature, and then turning it down to low before you leave the house. Starting them out at high will mean they are exposed to boiling liquid at the start to get them cooking well.

Finally, use lots of liquid, as much as you dare without diluting your spices or sauce too much, because even at low temperature, the stuff you cook tends to thicken.

OK folks, any good suggestions will be much appreciated. You don't have to type up or post recipes if you'd rather not. I can Google & I can also refer to other cooking threads here at A2K. I do recall there being considerable slow cooker discussions & recipes, but danged if I can recall on which threads, exactly!

So, OK ... which slow cooked recipe (that you've cooked or eaten) has absolutely knocked your socks off? Or really impressed you? (Please no suggestions or recipes with truffles or really, really expensive plonk in them, OK? )

Plonk, expensive or cheap, is wasted in a slow cooker--by the time you get home from work, not only will all the alcohol be gone, but so will all of the flavor. One of main reasons for using plonk in a recipe is to make the meat more tender--slow cooking will do that. If you just want it to flavor the sauce or s0up you are using, add it after you get home, and a half hour to an hour before serving.

Thats why I selected ribs as a "no mess up" starter meal. The sauce , under slow, will cook and congeal on the ribs, infusing them with a mokuness and flavor and "fall off te bone" texture.

We make paella in the slow cooker and started it on high and then after about an hour, turned it to low to develop a complexity. PAella lets you know that you can handle this tool without making everything tatse the same.

When we do a chicken we put it on a rack so it is in a heat bath and isnt being turned into a "goldina yoick"

Farmer, I guess you'd get the best results (with meat, especially) with a long cook on "low", yes?

I really like the sound of your spare ribs (pork, I assume?). I have Tabasco, but the only "hot sauce" I have here is of the Asian variety. Not sure if that's suitable. Ah, molasses. I'm not sure I can find a good brand here. (Not often used in Oz cooking.) And what is liquid smoke?

Is there some reason you cook on the patio & not in the house, farmer? (Like safety, or something? To tell the truth I'm a wee bit nervous about going out & leaving things cooking away ... but then, maybe I'm just being a bit of mamby pamby, because I haven't done it before?? )



Guess what? Fondues are back in fashion! People are having fondue parties! (Aghhh! All that melted cheese! How could I forget! )

So, Setanta, if I was cooking vegetables like potatoes, for example, how long would I cook them for? (I wish I had that damned booklet that should be with it! Have to do a bit of Googling about some of these details, I think!)

Mine has low, medium & high settings.

We usually use the slow cooker when we have something else going and dont need to fuss. SO , in the spring summer and fall, we usually set it out on the patio wall and plug it in to one of the GFI sockets out ther. Yes it is a fire safety thing , but also a measure of protection should the water or liquid cook away and the food begins to burn.

HMM, no molasses. do you have any other deep tasting syrups (not corn syrup please) do you have sorghum? thats a colonial style aged sweetener. Maybe if you go tropical you could cook the ribs in a fruit syrup and lots of pepper and garlic and papaya and limes.
Liquid smoke is a product that is just a condensed distillate from charcoal making and its bottled in little bottles . You splash it on the meat (amounts are controlled by your tatse).

MAybe youll have to look on line, We just get it at any supermarket.(Its a lazy way to get a smokey taste but its effective).

Weve always had luck with a low cook with ribs. Other stuff, like chicken, we do partially on high and finish for several hours on low. Our secret it to never have the chicken immersed in a liquid

Thank you, Set & farmer. A lot of good advice here! (Last thing I want is a soggy chicken! )

Chicken soup!

I made one last night, with my version of the slow cooker...a big pan left on my biggest element on 1 all night. It barely simmers. I can't see that it's any different!

Mine has chicken stock, chicken thighs, skinned ans trimmed of fat, heaps of vegies, a bit of chilli, lots of garlic and barley.

i cook everything on low, basically i'm a soup stew guy with the slow cooker

chop up potatoes, root veggies, some onion, meat (with chicken i'll put in whole pieces thighs with skin and bone, about two hours before serving, i'll pull out the pieces and skin and de bone and shred flesh before putting back in the pot), 1 cup stock and a can of V8 (vegetable cocktail, google it to find aussie equivalent), whatever spices you desire, top up with water, set on low and let cook for about 6-8 hours (often put it together at 8 am on a saturday for a 4 pm early supper of soup and crusty bread and rolls), i some times add rice in the last three hours or so and frozen peas in the last 2 hours or so, for a beef stew i'll add pot barley about half way through to thicken the stock

How much liquid with that, Deb? And how much food & liquid in the cooker would you recommend? 2/3rds full, say?

for soup or stew i make sure the liquid is about an inch over the ingredients, i' sometimes add more as it cooks

Thanks, djjd! I'm certain I'll be making lots of soups with it this winter! (Freezing day today, btw. Soup weather!)