slow cooking
Cooking a prime rib roast in the slow cooker. It's 0.8 kg, so not huge, but more than 1 person can eat. I found mixed reviews of how to prepare it on the internet. 2 sites said "slow cooker is fine, sear it first to make it flavourful though" and the rest of the internet was "zomg do it in the oven instead, slow cooker is a waste" however it sounded complicated, eg start baking at 500 F for 20 min then x min per lb for a maximum of who knows how long.
(Now that I think about it, a further complication is that my household amenities are all in Fahrenheit temperatures, whereas the meat comes with a metric weight on the package. So when I cook meat, I have to translate the kg into lb in addition to any math for degrees per weight per time. I tried making a little chart translating cooking times into kg, but then I found all kinds of conflicting info on the internet about even meat cooking times, so I give up for the time being)
This is what I did, I followed what this Yahoo Answers answerer had to say. I seared it on the pan first with butter, to brown it, put my boyfriend's steak spices on it, threw it in the slow cooker with a cup of water, beef oxo packet, a half an onion cut up, and 2 garlic cloves cut up. I may not do the garlic cloves next time because I didn't like the smell of them when I opened the lid to put in the meat thermometer, so I flicked them off the meat into the broth, maybe I wasn't supposed to chop em up. My mom never used garlic. However the onions seemed a 100% natural thing for me to do. So it should be in the slow cooker for 6 hours or so now, seems simpler than babysitting it in the oven and changing temperature etc.
I am enjoying the slow cooking - I did a cottage roll a couple of weeks ago and it was FABULOUS. We consumed it in one day, I had figured for the size of meat, it would last a couple days. Again, I looked up on the internet and found lots of info but ended up doing less of what they said. They said that for a New England Boiled Dinner, you should pre-soak the cottage roll (basically brined pork) to leach some of the salt out before cooking. I was in a bit of a tizzy so I threw the meat & veg into the damn thing for awhile and it was great. The broth was indeed scummy looking but it tasted great so I didn't care.
(Now that I think about it, a further complication is that my household amenities are all in Fahrenheit temperatures, whereas the meat comes with a metric weight on the package. So when I cook meat, I have to translate the kg into lb in addition to any math for degrees per weight per time. I tried making a little chart translating cooking times into kg, but then I found all kinds of conflicting info on the internet about even meat cooking times, so I give up for the time being)
This is what I did, I followed what this Yahoo Answers answerer had to say. I seared it on the pan first with butter, to brown it, put my boyfriend's steak spices on it, threw it in the slow cooker with a cup of water, beef oxo packet, a half an onion cut up, and 2 garlic cloves cut up. I may not do the garlic cloves next time because I didn't like the smell of them when I opened the lid to put in the meat thermometer, so I flicked them off the meat into the broth, maybe I wasn't supposed to chop em up. My mom never used garlic. However the onions seemed a 100% natural thing for me to do. So it should be in the slow cooker for 6 hours or so now, seems simpler than babysitting it in the oven and changing temperature etc.
I am enjoying the slow cooking - I did a cottage roll a couple of weeks ago and it was FABULOUS. We consumed it in one day, I had figured for the size of meat, it would last a couple days. Again, I looked up on the internet and found lots of info but ended up doing less of what they said. They said that for a New England Boiled Dinner, you should pre-soak the cottage roll (basically brined pork) to leach some of the salt out before cooking. I was in a bit of a tizzy so I threw the meat & veg into the damn thing for awhile and it was great. The broth was indeed scummy looking but it tasted great so I didn't care.