101 Things to Do With a Slow Cooker

Rating:
Summary: Tasty recipes, easy preparation, how could you go wrong?
Review: I've reviewed cookbooks on slow-cookers before but this one has quickly become one of my favorites. The recipes are divided into various categories including beverages, dips and fondue, soups, and stews, beef, chicken, pork, and desserts.
The book starts with 22 helpful hints for cooking with a slow cooker. The actual recipes follow and there are a lot of really good ones.

For example, I don't generally like pot roast but there is a recipe for cola roast that is really good. It also has some unusual recipes like peanut butter fondue, or Sante Fe cheese soup. Not only are there unusual recipes but many good recipes that one would not normally associate with a slow cooker. For example there are recipes for French Dip sandwiches, Italian chicken and mushrooms, sweet and sour pork, carrot cake, and pineapple upside-down cake.

The only thing that I would like to see is the cooking time put at the top of the recipe with the ingredients instead of buried in the recipe instructions. This is particularly important with slow-cooker recipes because they can require anything from half an hour to twelve hours or more of cooking. It does have a nice plastic cover to make it easy to wipe off and food matter that might get on it. One of the best slow-cooker cookbooks around, 101 Things to Do With a Slow Cooker is highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Easy - but unimpressive
Review: The beauty of a slow cooker is that you can dump things in it, go out, and come home to dinner! Further simplifying things by using "ingredients" like condensed soup, pie filling, and cake mix is not only insulting, but unhealthy. Unfortunately, most of the recipes in this book rely heavily on prepared foods (Scalloped Chicken calls for 1 box of scalloped potatoes, 1 can of chicken, and water). The recipes that shine are the ones (such as Cranberry Pork Roast and Almond Chicken) that use basic ingredients instead of prepackaged foods.

Rating:
Summary: Easy - but unimpressive
Review: The beauty of a slow cooker is that you can dump things in it, go out, and come home to dinner! Further simplifying things by using "ingredients" like condensed soup, pie filling, and cake mix is not only insulting, but unhealthy. Unfortunately, most of the recipes in this book rely heavily on prepared foods (Scalloped Chicken calls for 1 box of scalloped potatoes, 1 can of chicken, and water). The recipes that shine are the ones (such as Cranberry Pork Roast and Almond Chicken) that use basic ingredients instead of prepackaged foods.

Rating:
Summary: Creative Recipes
Review: The Chicken and Rice Casserole recipe in this book is one of my favorite ways to cook chicken in a hurry in the oven. You can also put the ingredients in casserole dish in a 350 degree oven. Now you can also cook this in a slow cooker.

There are many recipes using soups and boneless skinless chicken breasts. While most of the recipes do seem to be for beef, chicken or pork - there are also recipes for desserts and for vegetable cheese soup, Broccoli-Cheese Soup and Salsa Fever Soup. Vegetarians can use a meat substitute in many recipes. The second book has a special vegetarian section. Look for the 101 More Things to Do with a Slow Cooker.

While I'm still trying more recipes, the following may be of interest for holiday entertaining:

Holiday Wassail
Hot Spiced Cherry Cider
Cheese Fondue
Caramel Fondue
Chocolate Fondue

Other recipes we enjoyed: Sunday Roast. You might like the barbecued meatballs for a party. You can even make carrot cake or a triple rich chocolate cake in a slow cooker. A few of the recipes use cake mixes or brownie mixes.

~TheRebeccaReview.com

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Recipes But Not for Everyday Use
Review: The design of "101 Things to Do with a Slow Cooker" grabbed my attention right away. It's small in size, only 5"x7", with a coil binding that makes it easy to fold back or lay flat. One of the best physical features is the plastic front and back cover protectors. I was very excited by this and thought "This is going to be a great cookbook."

Flipping through the pages I came to a different conclusion: that I wasn't going to like anything. This was due to the first three recipes being virtually the same other than one ingredient. I felt cheated by the title.
These could have fallen under one recipe with a note for variations. Continuing on it amazed me how little text was in this book for ingredients and for directions. I put the book aside for a week due to lack of
interest.

A couple weeks ago, I decided the least I could do was give some of the recipes a try before I wrote a review. After reading thus far I think you will be surprised with the results, I know I was.

Out of the 18 recipes I tried, only one received a rating below 6. I rated each recipe according to my standards. The highest rating was 7. Each recipe was rated for the following: availability of ingredients, clarity of instructions, ease of prep, husband factor, taste, reheatabity, and freezability. One point is awarded for each area. Any area that didn't pass is in brackets. Anything with an extra number was doubly good in the taste category.

Quick Stew-6 (doesn't reheat well from freezer)
Tortilla Soup-8
Broccoli Cheese Soup-8
Beef & Mushrooms-7
Lasagne-8
Sweet and Sour Beef-6 (bland)
Shepherd's Pie-7
Chicken & Rice Casserole-7
Scalloped Chicken-8 (used with Cajun chicken)
Whole Cranberry Chicken-8 (better with dark meat)
Tater-tot casserole-8
Lemonade chicken-5 (husband factor, taste)
Orange chicken-6
Polynesian pork chops-7
Ham & potatoes-7
Triple rich chocolate cake-9 (gave an extra point for taste. Mmmm)
Pineapple upside-down cake-7

A lot of the recipes involved a lot of pre-packaged items but I'd expect the cook would have the common sense not to live off the recipes in this cookbook. They are not for everyday use but for the busy homemaker on a tight schedule. Some of the recipes are high in fat content but substitutions could be easily made. If you are rushed for time or just feeling lazy this little book is a time saver. The greatest surprise was being able to put a cake mix in the slowcooker. Who knew? The intro has two pages of helpful hints if you haven't used a slowcooker before. The book is sectioned into: Beverages (which I think is a worthless section), Dips & Fondues, Soups & Stews, Beef, Chicken, Pork and Desserts.

You'll notice I didn't try anything from the beverage, and dips and fondues section. My living arrangements don't warrant making a crock pot full of hot chocolate or dip. With any cookbook people generally don't use over half of the recipes. I tried 1/3 of the recipes and would use all but one of them again

Review Originally Posted at http://www.linearreflections.com

Rating:
Summary: Terrible for vegetarians
Review: This book should be entitled "101 Things to Do With a Slow Cooker AND MEAT". Even the VEGETABLE soup has a pound of steak in it. So do the Minestrone and Tomato Soup recipes! Most non-vegetarian recipe books have some recipes for non-meat eaters, but this one really has nothing (except the dessert recipes which manage not to have beef thrown into them). The Busy People's Slow Cooker Cookbook has a MUCH better variety of recipes for meat and non-meat eaters. I recommend that book over this one. If it didn't cost more to return this cookbook than to keep it, I'd return it.

Rating:
Summary: I use my Slow Cooker more than ever,now
Review: This is a great book! I use it at least once a week. The chicken dishes are very simple & taste great. I really like the fact that many of the dishes call for frozen,boneless skinless chicken breasts(like you buy in the bags at the warehouse clubs).That's right,use them with out thawing! Mama's Italian Chicken & Creamy Italian Chicken are family favorites. The pork chop dishes come out fall apart tender. The only dish I won't recomend is Cowboy Soup. It was awful!No flavor.However,one bad dish out of 101 isn't bad odds.By the way I have taken many of the dishes to potlucks & people go & buy the book because they love the food so much. I should ask for a comission! LOL

Rating:
Summary: 101 THings to Do With a Slow Cooker
Review: This is the perfect cookbook for the busy, on the go, working man/woman. The recipies are so easy to understand, require little or no preparation, and cook all day while you work. The best thing is to come home to a hot, ready to eat meal. My personal favorite recipies are the Triple Chocolate Cake, and the Chicken Tortilla Soup. Both of these are a real hit at my house! What a great book, and I have met both of the authors, and they are such neat, down to earth people who have the working man/woman in mind!