Tips and Advice - Kitchen Equipment

If you don’t have someone to do your cooking for you, a crock pot is a wise investment in your kitchen. I jokingly tell people that my crock pot is my best friend. After a long work day, it’s wonderful to arrive home to the aroma of dinner slow cooked and ready to eat. A slow cooker is one of the most useful kitchen appliances for the busy cook.

It’s simple to get up in the morning a few minutes early, and put the food in the crock pot. In the evening when you get home, you’ll have a delicious meal waiting for you. Even on days when you stay home, if you want to relax and watch movies, or spend time with friends, you can put dinner in the crock pot so you don’t have to worry about it later.

Crock pots range from the very inexpensive models that have the basic, low, medium, and high settings, to the expensive high end models with a few added features. The low end model works fine for most slow cooker recipes.

I have the Hamilton Beach Stay/Go Slow Cooker with a stainless steel casing and a black crock. It looks great on the counter. I use it at least three times a week. The best feature on this crock pot is the snaps for the lid. The lid has a rubber seal, and it snaps on tight. This allows me to take the crock pot to work or friend’s homes without any of the contents spilling.

If you want to be able to digitally set the time on a slow cooker, there are several models to choose from. Some allow you to set the length of time for cooking, others allow you to set the start time and stop time. If you’re leaving for work early in the morning, and you don’t want your crockpot to start cooking until mid-morning, this feature allows you to control when it begins heating.

There are many recipe sites for slow cookers. I use Slow and Simple quite often. I will also be posting my own recipes here at Foodie Mama. I also use a tried and true cookbook, Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes. With a book and the Internet, you can make an endless variety of meals in your slow cooker.

Here is one of my family’s favorites. The key to getting this recipe to turn out right is to make sure the chops stay standing up, so they cook evenly all around. The pork chops come out tender and tasty, more delicious than when I cook them on the stove.

Standing Up Pork Chops

• 4 thick cut port chops (3/4 to 1 inch thick)
• Italian bread crumbs or Shake and Bake breading mix
• One egg
• One plastic zip close bag
• Two sprigs of fresh rosemary
• 4 new potatoes
• Salt and pepper

Beat the egg with a whisk. Pour about 1 cup of bread crumbs in the plastic bag. Dip the chops in the egg, then place them in the bag of bread crumbs. If you are using Shake and Bake, follow the instructions on the box. Zip the bag closed and shake to cover the chops with the breading. Salt and pepper the chops to your taste.

Place the chops in the crock pot, standing up, bone side down. Place a potato between each chop to help them stay standing. Lay the two sprigs of rosemary between the chops.

Cover and cook on low all day, 8-10 hours. During the last hour, you may turn up the heat to high to brown the chops.

Serve with a salad or a side vegetable, and enjoy!

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Suzanne Pitner loves to cook, knit, and teach. She has won several Editor’s Choice awards as a feature writer at Suite 101 and she maintains the TeacherWriter blog.