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INTRODUCTION

Slow cooking is back! Its retro image is being replaced by one of practicality and simplicity in a demanding world where we’re all working harder, but wanting to relax and play hard too. Slow cooking allows for both – while the food cooks people are out getting on with their lives and it is ready and waiting to be served to guests or family on their return.

This book is intended to complement a busy lifestyle, providing ideas for slow-cooked food for busy people. Each chapter is intended to suit a different part of the day or a particular occasion, whether it is a work morning breakfast or a weekend brunch, a weeknight supper or romantic meal for two, a dinner party or a relaxed meal for a gathering of friends. All the recipes have been written with the timeconscious in mind, for those who like good-quality (and that doesn’t mean expensive!), great tasting food, but may not necessarily have hours in which to prepare it. There are also recipes for those with the inclination to do a little more advance preparation, and those who would rather throw it all into a pot and forget about it! Either way, as working late and/or lengthy socialising become the norm, you can feel confident that slow-cooked food can, in the majority of cases, be left happily for longer than the designated cooking time without spoiling, overcooking or burning.

Celebrity chefs have also begun to extol the virtues of slow cooking at ultra-low temperatures to create meltingly tender results. However, while chefs are able to use high-tech equipment that reduces to temperatures below 60°C (140°F), at home we are more limited. Home ovens usually have a minimum temperature of 110°C (225°F), Gas mark ¹/₄. In the real world the best way for us to replicate ultra-slow cooking and even basic slow cooking is with the use of a slow cooker.

Home cooks have always emulated restaurants to some extent and increasingly that not only takes the form of cooking methods but also ingredients. With the increased use of slow cooking come those foodstuffs particularly suited to it, such as cuts of meat previously deemed to be slightly ‘old fashioned’ like shins, hocks, necks and brisket, to name but a few. However, while these trends can take things so far, time and people’s lack of it seems to continually win when it comes to getting everyday food onto the table.

Slow cooking turns these undervalued and underused cuts into beautiful tender pieces of meat. These cuts are much more affordable than the ever-popular cuts like rump, fillet and sirloin, and have the added value of using up parts of the carcass that may otherwise have been forgotten. Using as much of the animal as possible is good for your wallet, respectful to the animal and critical to farmers’ livelihoods.

Slow cookers are also very energy efficient; again allowing you to save money, plus they cook in an environmentally responsible way. Some slow-cooking methods can save up to five times the energy of stove-top cooking since heat is retained rather than being lost to the air, and that has to be a good thing for the planet. Most slow cookers use as little energy as a domestic light bulb. From a practical point of view this also makes cooking more pleasant as the kitchen doesn’t steam up and get as hot as it would during conventional cooking. Slow-cooked foods are often redolent of the winter months when stews, casseroles and soups are popular, but the advantage of a cooler kitchen makes slow cooking in the summer just as appealing.

Slow cooking suits the needs of many of us who have little time; it reflects popular trends in the restaurant industry, as well as supporting farmers and making a small contribution to the environment. But, most importantly, slow-cooked food tastes great! Long, gentle cooking allows food to develop flavour in a different way to rapid cooking. It coaxes out flavours that are slower to develop and encourages the flavours of individual ingredients to marry together and blend in a unique way.

Cooking food slowly – it’s so ‘now’…

Despite being the latest buzzword on the lips of celebrity chefs, slow cooking is far from being a trendy, new phenomenon. Cooking food slowly has been around for as long as we, and our ability to create fire, have. The first stories of humans using fire seem to indicate cooking in large fire pits, where whole animal carcasses would be buried in the midst of slow-burning coals and cooked for 24 hours or more. Stories of similar cooking methods are recounted, and still employed in Australia, by Aboriginal tribes and apparently also in parts of India.

In the late eighteenth century the English scientist Benjamin Thompson is reported to have left a joint of meat in a drying oven overnight, only to be amazed when, the next morning, he found that the meat was tender and fully cooked, although it hadn’t browned. He was totally at a loss to explain why this had happened.

Much later, in 1969, Thompson’s experiment was repeated by Professor Nicholas Kurti from the University of Oxford during a lecture at the Royal Institution. He showed that the temperature of the meat in Thompson’s trial did not go higher than 70°C (158°F), far lower than the temperature at which most of us roast meat, around 200°C (400°F).

In the world wars cooking was frequently done in straw boxes where stews and similar foods were heated over a fire to boiling point and then left encased in a box filled with straw or hay. The food went on cooking, slowly but surely. Wool, feathers, cotton, rice hulls and more recently cardboard, aluminium foil, newspaper, fibreglass, fur and rigid foam have also been documented as good insulators in similar methods now used predominantly by serious campers and explorers.

For many years, Orthodox Jews have been making cholent (meaning ‘hot food’ in Hebrew), a stew simmered over a very low flame or in a slow oven for many hours (up to 24 hours or more) and served on Shabbat (the Sabbath). In some instances the uncooked cholent was brought to the local baker before sunset on Fridays and he would put the mixture in his oven, which he always kept fired, and families would come by to pick up their baked cholent the next morning.

What’s all the fuss about?

Slow cooking achieves three main things – it tenderises (the different proteins in meat are affected by heat at quite low temperatures, far below the heat of a normal roasting oven, between 55–65°C/ 131–149°F), it flavours (particularly when reaching temperatures around 100°C/212°F), and it kills harmful bacteria (at 68°C/154°F). When meat in particular is cooked for a long time at a low temperature the tough protein, collagen, which holds the muscle fibres together slowly disintegrates and the gelatine that is produced dissolves into any liquid added, which helps to make a rich gravy.

The principle of slow cooking is one of retained heat. In conventional cooking any heat applied to the pot or pan after it reaches boiling point is merely replacing heat lost to the air by the pot. In slow cooking the insulated base and pot prevent most of the heat in the food from escaping into the environment, so little energy is needed to complete the cooking process and moisture is retained in the pot too.

Using a slow cooker

This couldn’t be easier – on or off, high or low. In terms of actually using the machine it is very simple.

Some models have a medium setting, which heats up to the cooker’s highest temperature and then automatically switches to low for the remainder of the cooking time. Others have a warming function to keep food ticking over at perfect eating temperature after cooking has finished, but that’s about as complex as the controls get!

Buying a slow cooker

There are a surprisingly large number of slow cookers available, which vary in size, shape, capacity and price. Prices are surprisingly low in the majority of cases, although as with most things, there is a product to appeal to every consumer and every pocket. As with any kitchen appliance or oven, each brand varies in terms of its heating speed and how evenly it cooks and, as with any oven or appliance, there is an element of getting used to your own model.

Most major brands have a removable inner dish, although some fixed models are available. For flexibility, the removable models are far superior, especially ones that can be used on the hob to sauté – they create less washing up if meat and foods are seared before cooking, and most importantly they retain all the flavours and caramelised loveliness created by sautéing and searing.

Try to buy a model that’s suitable for heating in the oven or under a grill – this will give you increased options in terms of finishing dishes to give them colour after cooking. A machine with an in-built digital timer is also a real advantage in terms of ease and convenience and is definitely worth paying a little extra for.

All recipes in this book have been tested in a 5.7 litre (10 pint) family sized cooker. The capacity of your cooker really depends on who and how many you are cooking for, and whether you want to cook large joints of meat, for example, or cakes and puddings. The former are suited to large oval cookers, while a pudding basin or cake tin will need some depth to contain it. A large 5–6 litre (9–10¹/₂ pint) cooker is a good all-rounder for this, but it’s worth considering its size, especially when it comes to storage. If you are in doubt then go for a larger model than you think you might need as this will serve you well for freezer cooking and entertaining and be more adaptable than one that’s simply too small. As a general guide, 1.5–2.5 litre (3–4 pint) cookers are perfect for one and two people, while 2.5 litres (4 pints) will cater for about four. Upwards of 3.5 litres (6 pints) in capacity is perfect for five to six people, entertaining and cooking large batches of food for the freezer.

All slow cookers can be filled to within 2–3cm (³/₄–1¹/₄in) of the brim, and there is absolutely nothing to worry about when leaving your slow cooker on all day or night without supervision. If you have any worries check your manufacturer’s instructions for guidelines on operation times, particularly in terms of the warming function.

Getting organised!

There is no doubt that a slow cooker will save you time and effort in the kitchen. However, to reap the benefits some preparation is required to ensure that you have the right ingredients ready to go before leaving the cooker to do its stuff. Most of this preparation starts with your choice of ingredients.

Choosing suitable ingredients

We have already discussed the increased use of slow-cooked, old-fashioned cuts of meat (see page 8). Some cuts (usually forequarter cuts from the front of the animal, or those parts of the animal that have had to work hard, such as legs and necks) are higher in fat and are naturally tougher through more rigorous or regular use. Slow moist cooking enables the protein in these muscles to break down, and produce gelatine, which makes the meat more tender and succulent. A fillet or breast with significantly less fat content may naturally be more tender, as it has done very little while the animal was alive, but will dry out more quickly during slow cooking and have less flavour and an unappealing, dry texture. If using higher fat meat concerns you, then rest assured that in the writing of this book, slow cooking has in the main proved to be a lower fat option to conventional cooking, as searing and frying of ingredients have often been unnecessary. Most meats look and taste better if ‘sealed’ or browned prior to cooking. However, the notion that meat must be browned to ‘seal’ in the meat juices during cooking and keep it moist is a myth. At 60°C (140°F) meat fibres begin to shrink and release their juice, whether ‘sealed’ or not. So, unless it is absolutely necessary for taste or appearance, the meat in this book is used directly to save time.

Fruit and vegetables vary too, some being rather more resilient to long slow cooking than others, despite the more delicate temperatures of the slow cooker. As you would expect, root vegetables will take longer cooking than soft, delicate vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli, although you may be pleasantly surprised by vegetables cooked with their skins on, such as aubergines and courgettes, which one may otherwise expect to disintegrate with lengthy cooking. Unless otherwise stated, place vegetables in the slow cooker dish first then top with the meat, if using, as this will ensure that the vegetables cook evenly and absorb all the tasty meaty juices. Fruit follows a similarly logical path, soft fruit breaking down significantly faster than stone fruit or apples and pears, for example, and fruit in skins holding up remarkably well.

Cut potatoes will turn black (oxidise) when in contact with the air, as will cut apples, pears and bananas. These must either be completely immersed in liquid during cooking or coated in lemon juice to prevent this ‘oxidisation’ from happening.

Dairy and sugar do not like very lengthy slow cooking (upwards of 6 hours) as they become denatured, especially when they are in concentrated form in cakes and desserts. Both seem to caramelise unpleasantly and start to break down. However, a few hours are fine, and if well diluted, in water, for example, there are few issues. If in doubt, stir dairy products in at the end of cooking to finish a dish, rather than cook with them for the duration.

Pasta can be cooked in the slow cooker but will become unpleasantly soft if cooked for too long. Try adding pasta to slow-cooked sauces about 30 minutes before the end of cooking. Lasagne and cannelloni are, however, more successful in the slow cooker (see Red Pepper, Basil and Ricotta Cannelloni on page 56).

Rice will absorb lots of excess moisture produced during slow cooking and therefore lots of flavour too. Add about 30–50 minutes before the end of cooking and stir a couple of times to ensure that it cooks evenly.

Dried beans still need to be soaked overnight before being cooked in the slow cooker. Dried red kidney beans must also be boiled for at least 10 minutes before draining and cooking to remove their dangerous toxins. Lentils, split peas and drained, tinned beans can be used directly.

Frozen ingredients must be defrosted before use in the slow cooker, otherwise they are unlikely to reach a safe cooking temperature, making them food poisoning time bombs!

The cooking liquid is an important part of success in slow cooking. As water is not lost in slow cooking in the way it is during extended stove-top simmering, the amount of water used to cook foods is normally reduced by about a quarter. Evaporation is reduced in the slow cooker as all the steam is retained in the pot; however, there is still some evaporation as the moisture/steam hits the hot sides of the cooking dish – this again will vary from one machine to another so keep an eye out when you are getting to know your cooker. Use water, stocks, wine, beer, cider, fruit juice or similar to cook in and add flavour. Bear in mind that when cooking with wine or vinegar the lack of evaporation means that the acidity and alcohol doesn’t cook off in the same way as stove-top cooking, so the flavour usually remains very pungent and undeveloped.

While cooking in liquid is particularly useful in slow cooking, so too is the ability to use the slow cooker as a water bath (also called a bain-marie). Gone are the hours of checking and worrying about steamers and pans boiling dry – this simply doesn’t happen in the slow cooker. A water bath is particularly useful when baking, creating a fantastically light sponge or fluffy custard. It’s good too in terms of cooking for long periods of time (clearly a moot point when discussing slow cooking, but in this instance a long period of time is 8–9 hours or perhaps overnight). It seems to provide a very gentle cook so that whether cooking overnight or cooking something that’s very delicate like a custard, the water bath produces a great result.