Makes for an easy life! (Prima Slow Cooker)

Member Name: Angela F

Product:	Prima Slow Cooker
Date:	29/03/04 (910 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No effort, Tender meat, Cheap to run

Disadvantages: Need lots of time

What a fab invention!

My mum bought me one of these, she'd had one for a couple of weeks and kept harping on about how good it was. - She wasn't wrong.

I've made many a casserole in this thing, beef, chicken, lamb, sausage and even just plain vegetable. The beauty of it is you can just fill it up and forget about it for hours, and no matter how long you leave it the casserole always turns out beautifully.

I cooked a whole joint of beef in it yesterday, just bunged it in with a load of veg and some casserole sauce mix and left it on "Auto" for 8 hours. The beef was so tender when it came out that when I tried to carve it it literally fell to pieces. And it was so succulent. The meat hardly shrank at all (unlike when you roast it and it shrinks to about a third of the size!), and I hardly had to chew it. So often I have paid out well over £5 for a decent joint of beef (although small) for just myself and my husband, but when it it has been cooked it has shrunk so much and turned out to be so tough or gristly that it just isnt enjoyable. How pleasant it is to be able to make a nice meal out of a cheap bit of beef.

The good thing about this is the whole meal is cooked in the one pot, so you have a massive casserole and only the crock pot and lid to wash up afterwards. With the crock pot being ceramic it is so easy to clean, food very rarely sticks to it.

The only thing you have to be careful with is thicker sauces. If you are using a ready made sauce (from a jar or tin) you may need to water it down a little, or keep checking on it to see if it needs water adding as they can sometimes burn on the bottom of the crock pot. It is a good idea to give the casserole a thorough stir through every hour or so in this instance.

I imagine that you could also make good home-made soup in one of these, although I have yet to try.

Slow cookers are great when you have a busy day planned, or kn
ow you aren't going to be around, or have the time to prepare a proper dinner. You can just chop all the vegetable (or even lazier buy them pre-packaged) and throw them in the pot with a bit of meat and some water and a couple of stock cubes, then leave for several hours (the longer the better), and voila, you have a fabulous meal cooked with virtually no effort at all. And the great thing is there's very little risk of burning, boiling over or the thing catching fire if unattended!

I would highly recommend one of these to anyone with a busy lifestyle (or not!). :-)

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