Slow Cooker For Healthy Living

A slow cooker (also called a crock pot) is a time saver and a convenient cooking device. You can prepare a meal in the morning and when you arrive from work it is ready to be served. It can enhance the nutritional content of foods also. With slower cooking, more vitamins and minerals are retained in the food.

Meals cooked with the use of crock pots can be very delicious. The food flavors sink in deeply and gradually. The flavors of the herbs and stock are also well absorbed. Moist heat tenderizes the meat.

A properly working slow cooker and a strict adherence to recommended cooking procedures make meals cooked with slow cooker perfectly safe to be consumed. Slow cooking eliminates any bacteria.

Cheaper cuts of red meat or white meat are cooked better in crock pot or slow cooker plus it saves you some money. They have less fat content compared to expensive cuts that make them more suitable for slow cookers. It normally requires eight hours to cook most meat.

Place food from one half up to two thirds of the crock pot's capacity only. Slow cooker filled to its full capacity will not properly cook food. However, food will be cooked quite fast when the liquid and its level is lower than the usual.

Foods on the bottom will be more moist and will cook faster because of the simmering fluid. Cut too much fat from meat and take out the skin of meat from poultry. Long, slow cooking will melt fats and give the finished dish an unpleasant feel.

Remove the cover and shift to high setting during the last half hour of cooking time to thicken the juice and concentrate the flavors.

As tips to slow cooking, add seafood only in the final one hour of cooking time to avoid overcooking it, overcooked seafood has a gristly texture.

Ground meats should be pan-fried first before cooking it in slow cooker to get the best result. You can brown large cuts of meat before cooking it in the crock pot, although this step is not really needed, browning the meat can add color and further develop the flavor.

Vegetables easily cooked such as tomatoes, zucchini and mushrooms should be added on the last 45 minutes to avoid overcooking them.

Use just a small amount of Tabasco sauce and cayenne pepper and put them in the crock pot at the end of required cooking time to avoid a bitter taste. In general, spices should come in the last hour so as not to lose its tasty flavor if cooked together with other ingredients during the duration of cooking time.

Add dairy products at the final half hour of desired cooking time except when the recipe requires differently.

If you are planning to cook with a recipe not specifically made for the slow cooker, cut the liquid down by one third or one half, because liquid does not easily boil away from the crock pot.

Generally, slow cookers are safer to use for cooking because it works on lower temperatures, and the lids are always closed. This prevents accidents that may result to fires. There are also certain types of meat that are more conducive to slow cooking above other methods.

What Features Do You Look For in Your Recipe Software?

Do you enjoy cooking? Do you dread going through all of those scraps of paper looking for that Vegetable and Beef Soup recipe that you make once a month? Well, I know that I do. I have absolutely TONS of hand written recipes, or I used to. Yeah, I kept the originals. They are now in a box in my garage, but they have been transformed into a marvel of technology. They're now in my Living Cookbook Recipe Software where I can quickly open them up, print a copy if I need to and save myself about 30 minutes looking through scraps of paper.

I set out on my journey to find the perfect recipe management software on the market. I looked high and low. I had an agenda. Not only did I want to organize my own personal recipes, but I wanted to be able to download recipes from the Internet into the software. I wanted to be able to create a cookbook from my own original recipes that I could either print and bind or upload to a website to sell. The software I chose had to do all of those things. I wanted the cookbooks to be in a standard cookbook format. I'm old fashioned, I like things in a familiar form. I wanted to be able to email the recipes to friends and family that always call around the holidays or when they're having a party and need a particular recipe. I keep wondering how I became the sole keeper of my mothers cornbread dressing recipe. I guess I'm the only one in the family that is organized. Also, I'm older now and I wanted to choose the font size customized to my eyes. No more having to wear glasses to read my recipes. Yeah!

One other very important piece of the puzzle was that I needed to know the exact nutritional analysis of each recipe. My brother was recently diagnosed with Type II Diabetes and anyone in that same boat knows that you can't just guess about what you're eating. You have to know for sure what's in the food you eat. This cookbook software has that built in. Their database is linked directly to the USDA Nutritional Tables and if the USDA makes any updates, you just go to the link in your software and upload the updates. Very important. Just be forewarned. That information my surprise you. Boy, do I ever wish that I hadn't put my Homemade Pimento Cheese recipe in there. Ouch, the fat grams. Oh well, don't they say that it's what you do most of the time that counts? I sure hope "they" are right.

This recipe software does a lot more than just the points I have covered, but these were the most important ones for me. If you're looking for cooking software, decide what your most important needs are and go from there.

How To Get Banned From the Kitchen With Popcorn Eggs - A Mom's Secret to Never Cooking Again

First, this cooking recipe is only for people who are busy, too busy to stand in the kitchen while the stove is on and watch the food cook. This recipe is for those who like to get the meal started and walk away and do other chores.

First take the eggs out of the refrigerator, place in a pot of water on the stove, put on the stove, turn on the flame and leave the room. Do something such as make phone calls, answer e-mails, do your nails.

When you start to hear the sound of popping, it's definitely time to go into the kitchen and check on your lovely eggs. The popping sound will only happen when the eggs have been on the stove long enough to have allowed the water to boil out of the pot. Therefore, when there's no water left in the pot, the eggs will start popping and fly like projectiles around your kitchen, most likely landing on walls, the ceiling, the floor, or aimed at you if you're in the kitchen when popping finally occurs.

This is not only messy, it's distinctively smelly... Okay, I'm only kidding about this being a good idea. The first time I made popcorn eggs I was permanently banned by my husband from the kitchen and he insists on making all of the meals....

I hope you enjoyed my recipe and kitchen tips and I'm more than happy to share with you my recipes for squash pancakes, pasta for the pets, and french onion soup.

Warning: Please note, this recipe is for entertainment purposes only, and too dangerous to be duplicated. I cannot take any responsibility for the dangerous aspects of the results of this recipe. I hoped you got a good laugh at my expense.