Eating the right type of foods these days is so important to keep our bodies and minds in tip-top condition.
Let’s take a closer look at the recipes of some of the best healthy slow cooker meals.
Slow Cooked Curry Meals
Using a slow cooker to create a tender curry for the family is a great idea. Although it may be quicker to fry up the ingredients of your curry before adding the curry paste or sauce, it tastes so much better cooked on a low heat over a longer period of time.
If you choose to make a meat-based curry, such as chicken, pork, or even goat, cooking the meat gently over the course of the whole day will make sure the meat doesn’t get too dry and will make it taste so much more tender.
Don’t forget to put your chosen meat in the slow cooker raw, and let it cook for up to 6 hours, depending on the type of meat.
If you choose to make a vegetable curry, then again using a slow cooker is great as it will help with the sauce to explode with so much flavor. Should you find you need to thicken your curry then add a little starch close to the cooking end time.
Soup
There really is nothing better than some hot, warm, hearty soup on a freezing cold winter day. Throw away the instant soups or cans and make your next soup on a slow cooker.
Creating a healthy, slow-cooked soup has never been easier especially if you use websites like https://www.corriecooks.com/ to help inspire you with ideas.
The beauty of cooking soup is that you can throw in pretty much whatever you like to create the dish. So this is perfect for using up those vegetables that have been sitting in the fridge.
Again, should you want some meat in your soup, cook it raw for roughly six hours to keep the meat nice and tender. Don’t forget to add your flavors and stock for the soup and leave cooking throughout the day.
By the time you’re ready for your tea or evening meal, the hot bubbling soup will be ready to devour. Yummy!
Stew
Similar to cooking curries, the slow cooker is excellent at making a healthy stew for your family dinner. There are endless recipes for stews but a favorite of most people is slow-cooked beef stew.
The longer you cook the beef in the slow cooker the more tender and flakey the meat will get. You can really taste the difference with beef cuts from it being cooked by a slow cooker compared to a standard oven.
Always make sure to add seasoning to your stew and keep tasting it throughout the cooking period, checking if more salt or pepper is needing to be added.
Food You Shouldn’t Use a Slow Cooker For
Although slow cookers are great for most types of meals and food, there are however some foods that you should never use a slow cooker for.
Let’s take a look at what those are and why.
Pasta
Everyone loves a carb-heavy pasta dish, but you should never cook any type of pasta with a slow cooker. If you have unfortunately ever tried this, then you will know how badly this ends.
Pasta generally cooks very quickly so if you try to cook it with a slow cooker it will mainly turn to mush or at best make the pasta very soft.
The best pasta always still has a slight bite to it when cooked, so mushy pasta is not going to make a good spaghetti bolognese dish!
Noodles
Similar to pasta, noodles tend to cook pretty quickly and will also turn to mash if cooked in a slow cooker.
Should the dish you are planning to cook require noodles then maybe make the rest of the dish, the sauce and its contents with the slow cooker and cook the noodles separately at the end to add to them meal.
Rice
Rice most definitely shouldn’t be cooked with a slow cooker. It is always best to cook rice in a saucepan or even use one of the microwavable rice packets instead.
So when you are making your curry or stew with a slow cooker, like with noodles, make the rice separately and add to the dish at the end.
Dairy Products
A lot of recipes will have some form of dairy in them. Whether it’s butter, cream or cheese, sometimes these really need to be added to complete the taste of the dish.
Although cooking dairy in a slow cooker isn’t ideal, it can be done. Your best solution to this problem is by adding the chosen dairy product right at the end of the cooking process for only a couple of minutes. Any longer and the dairy will start to curdle and separate and nobody wants that in their dinner.
Fresh Herbs
The problem with putting fresh herbs to cook in a slow cooker is that they will wilt very quickly and so will change the taste of what they add to the dish.
Sometimes this can make the taste a bit bitter and sour, which could end up ruining your whole cooked meal.
Delicate Vegetables
Although most vegetables can be cooked with a slow cooker, the more delicate type of vegetable such as spinach, peas and tomatoes shouldn’t be cooked in a slow cooker.
As they are already quite soft and cook in a very quick time, if cooked with a slow cooker they will just turn to mush.
Slow cookers are really great for cooking up healthy and nutritious meals for the whole family, kids and adults alike are sure to find a dish that they will love that can be cooked with a slow cooker.
They are perfect to use as you can just leave them running in the background, cooking away for hours, to be ready to eat just in time for dinner.
