The star of my next blog post for my Genius hour is the Slow Cooker! Ever since the first time I used a slow cooker, I fell in love! I mean, what’s not to love is the better question! Slow cookers are easy to use, have huge versatility, and as I mentioned in a previous posting, are great for meal prepping! So let’s learn a little about the slow cooker and its pros and cons, and see how students can use this device to their advantage in the fight to eat well.
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| Bunches and Bits. (2009, November 20). Slow Cooker (Online Image). Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/bunchesandbits/4123281529 |
First thing’s first, one of the biggest allures of the slow cooker is just how easy it is to use! I consulted a food blog called The Food You Choose that details a lot of information on the slow cooker on both the positive and negative side. The gentlemen who runs the blog, Chris, agrees on it being an easy tool! They are inexpensive to purchase, make for an easy clean up, and are a serious help with time is a factor. As students, time is always a factor! As Chris explains, you can throw together a slow cooker meal before you leave for work or school in the morning and it will be ready to go when you get home later in the day! The only cons associated with the slow cooker is that they deplete some of the nutrients from your food through heat degradation, but this will occur in any cooking process!
Another benefit to using a slow cooker is that there are tons of different kinds of recipes you can use to make great meals with the slow cooker! At the end of Chris’ blog post he provides his readers with a recipe for Chicken and Rice soup with Vegetables! You can use your slow cooker for soups, stews, chillies, and many other types of meals! The options are endless and this is great because you will never get bored or sick of using your slow cooker. A great source for recipes that I have found is a website called All Recipes. This website has thousands of recipes for anything you could think of, including the slow cooker. As I speak with you now, a search on this website for the key words slow cooker turns up 1736 recipes! There is also an app you can download to your phone called the Dinner Spinner App that uses the same database. Some great assets to this tool is that it shows you reviews, photos, reviews from people who have tried the recipe and made tweaks, and the option to have the recipe altered to fit the number of servings you aim to cook for! This is my go-to website and app for majority of my new cooking ventures!
On a final note, as I have previously mentioned, the slow cooker is not only great for having dinner ready for you when you get home, but also for meal prepping for the week of school and work! Slow cookers can make big portions of meals with minimal time and effort that you can easy separate into Tupperware containers or bag and freeze for a later date! Some of the best meals I’ve had were made in a crock pot. There’s also not a lot that beats having the ability to pre-make your lunch or dinner for most of the week in one day with minimal prep time. Take my word for it, invest in a slow cooker!
Click here to view a website that boasts 39 slow cooker recipes that will last you all week!
Also, click here if you are new to the slow cooker to learn the 10 top tips for using a slow cooker!
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