I never grill or cook meat for chili, because it makes the meat a bit more tough. I find that cooking it in the juices of the dish results in a far more tender meat, especially when using a coarse grind like chili meat. Yes, there are recipes that require a bit of cooking for the crock pot, but there are a lot that don't. Stews respond well to crock pot cooking without any cooking of ingredients. There are oven recipes and stove top recipes that require cooking of ingredients before assembling them in the final cooking dish. This means that a crock pot is no different in that regard.
-----Original Message----- From: Cookinginthedark [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charles Rivard Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2013 5:55 PM To: COOKING IN THE DARK Subject: [CnD] under a misconception I've always heard how easy and convenient a crock pot is. I figured that it would be just the thing for a beginning cook because you have to do so little to get great meals. However, there are a lot of recipes for the crock pot that I don't want to try because you have to brown the meat, boil this or that, and then, basically use the crock pot to finish the process. This is disappointing to me, because I figured, under an apparent misconception, that you would put everything into the crock pot and let it, not the cook, do the work. I don't want to have to cook the food before it goes into a crock pot to complete the process I was hoping that it would perform from start to finish. Some meals are the type I am looking for, but a lot of them aren't. One exception to that is the chili recipe I make, which I have previously posted. I use Venison, and I do grill it before it gets thrown into the pot to cook for 8 hours on the low setting. It makes the house smell really good all day, too, which is another thing that I do like about the crock pot. You've been smelling something all day, and can't wait to eat it! --- Shepherds are the best beasts, but Labs are a close second. _______________________________________________ Cookinginthedark mailing list [email protected] http://acbradio.org/mailman/listinfo/cookinginthedark _______________________________________________ Cookinginthedark mailing list [email protected] http://acbradio.org/mailman/listinfo/cookinginthedark
