Inexperienced Crockpot User Asks: How Reliable is a Recipe's Cooking Times on a Crockpot?

[luxuria_oceanus]

I'm a new crockpot user thanks to my boyfriend's mom who bought me a crockpot recipe book for Christmas. Before then, I wouldn't have even touched one (though my boyfriend owns one) because I couldn't come to terms with the idea of putting something on to cook and not tasting/touching it until done. The recipes looked so good...and now I'm

Comments

[brittdreams]

White rice turns to mush pretty easily in the crockpot. Long grain brown rice holds up better, in my experience, but there's still the issue of the ratio between the volume of food and the size of the crockpot that must be accounted for. If you're making a recipe that's supposed to be in a 6 quart pot in a 4 quart pot, you're going to have some issues if there are grains like pasta or rice involved. I typically just cook my rice separately.

[throbinson]

I invested in a crockpot with a timer; otherwise, any meals I set to cook in the morning when I left for work were mush by the time I got back @ 10-11 hours later. Just delaying start time by a couple of hours, or using some frozen ingredients, helps some with that issue.

It is also helpful to use chicken thighs rather than breasts when putting in the slow cooker, since breasts get dried out and stringy (paradoxically) but thighs do better with long cooking times. Much better for dishes such as chicken & dumplings, etc.

[amysisson]

Just in general: in my experience, the suggested times in cookbooks for slow cookers are almost always too long.