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| Hoisin Shredded Pork Sliders (6-10 hours in the crockpot) |
She writes:
"Help! I'm a busy working professional and leave the house at 7am each morning. I'm not home until 6pm each evening. I LOVE the idea of slow cooker recipes and meals that are ready for me after a long day, but have NO CLUE how I could ever make this work, seeing as I'm away from the house for 11 hours each day. Do you have any suggestions/ tips for me? Are there ANY recipes that could work for this time frame?"
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| No Fail BBQ Beef (6-10 hours) |
My first suggestion is to invest in a slow cooker that has a timer on it. One that will automatically switch to warm after the time that you set it for. For example, I own this slow cooker and it works great for that purpose. I like it because you can set it for 30 minute increments. I also suggest this slow cooker because it is the one that America's Test Kitchen suggests. And I trust them. Only ever cook on LOW and have it switch to warm after suggested cooking time is up.
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| Cuban-style Black Bean Soup (about 8 hours) |
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| Mexican Pulled Pork (7-9 hours) |
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| Beef and Barley Soup (6-8 hours) |
Anyone else have any suggestions??
You will definitely be limited on what you can make when you are gone that long but at least one or two days a week you could have something in the slow cooker ready when you get home!
11 comments:
Great tips and great crockpots!
For years I would use a lamp timer (you know, the ones that you can set to turn your lamp on or off at a certain time). I'd put my food in the crock pot in the morning (usually frozen meat) and my crock pot would turn on when I needed it to so that it would be ready when I got home from work. Worked great for me!
Great tips. Just linked this post on my Tips page on Slow Cooker from Scratch.
thanks Kalyn!
I have the same issue so I do freezer crock pot meals (chop up/prep, bag, and freeze everything beforehand), then I put them in the slow cooker overnight while I sleep. It's ready in the morning and I have lunch and dinner for the day.
I was having problems with soggy vegetables and over cooked meat so I just ordered a timer like the one described above, from Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005MMSTNG/ref=oh_details_o01_s02_i02. It won't go to warm like the crock pots you talked about will, but I can time it to start say at noon and be ready when I get home instead of me worrying that it is over cooking my dinner and being disappointed with the quality of the dinner or trusting that someone would be home to unplug it and have to reheat the food when I get off. I will be able to use my crock pot a lot more if it works for me.
This might not work for everyone but I have a big fridge at work so depending on the recipe I throw it all in the crock pot the night before or in the morning and take it to work with me. Then I can start it when I need to have it ready to take home and have a hot dinner with no work.
Any concerns about frozen meat in the crock pot? I saw this online and now I have concerns about this (though I have definitely done this in the past...). Thoughts? http://busycooks.about.com/od/slowcookerrecipes/a/crockpot101.htm Go down to the first point where it says "Experts recommend..."
yeah, Amy I've read that before. But since my family isn't a high risk group either, I don't worry about it. We haven't gotten food poisoning (that I know about anyhow) yet! It's up to each, I guess.
Even if you don't put the whole insert in the fridge the night before, you can use those cooking bags and put all the ingredients in there and then stick the bag inside the crockpot in the morning. That is another good tip.
Thanks for the article. I think I am going to have to order a new crockpot so that I can control those options more with time and temperature. Mine tends to burn everything if it cooks all day.
Marcia, good idea with the cooking bags! I love those things.
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