Crock-Pot: a love story

Taking slow cooking to the next level with this ugly appliance. 

The Crock-Pot came into FF’s Nora’s life two years ago.  She wasn’t immediately taken with this ugly, Tell Sell-like appliance.  But that changed instantly after she made her first dish with it. Taking slow cooking to the next level.

At the time, I lived in Buenos Aires and rented a house there with a great kitchen from a man from New York, including a Crock-Pot. Crock what? The plug on the pot was American. Apparently, the American was so attached to the Crock-Pot that he decided to bring it with him to Argentina. Why, I wondered.

How it works

The Crock-Pot works as follows: you put the ingredients for your dish in the large pot and let time do the rest of the work. Whether that’s simmering, cooking or baking. Special feature: it has a timer for preparing dishes for up to ten hours. That means you can turn it on in the morning before you go to work and have, for example, tender beef stew on your plate in the evening. During those ten hours, not a bit of flavor is lost and everything you cook develops a deep and complex flavor. Yes, I understand the American. This appliance takes slow cooking to the next level.

No fancy Le Creuset for my beef, but a Crock-Pot.

After preparing my first crockpot meal (shredded beef), I didn’t want anything else. No fancy Le Creuset for my beef, but a Crock-Pot. The difference from regular pots is that the heat is distributed perfectly throughout the entire dish and you can cook at a very low temperature. Much lower than is possible on a stove. Curries and sauces take an average of one to two hours to prepare. Roasts and other meat dishes take around seven to eight hours.

All-rounder

Fortunately, you can prepare much more with the pot than just standard slow-cooked dishes such as beef stew and pulled pork. From classic lasagna to mushy chocolate lava cake and apple crumble, everything turns out finger-licking good. We’re not talking about cooking at a Tell-Sell level.

I’m Nora and I’m a fan of the Crock-Pot, just so you know. And I assure everyone who buys this affordable appliance (approximately 60 euros): your life in the kitchen will never be the same again.

Text: Nora van den Heuvel