I now have a 12 qt. slow cooker

[BADGE OF HONOR]

WHOA

How do you dislike tomato sauce?!

[Eater of Clowns]

The best (re: worst) idea for a slow cooker I employed a few years ago with some friends.

Take a gallon of the best apple cider you can find and dump it in.  Toss in some cinnamon sticks.  Core and segment a few whole apples.  Then toss in spiced rum to taste.  Wait.  I recall nothing after this.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The best (re: worst) idea for a slow cooker I employed a few years ago with some friends.

Take a gallon of the best apple cider you can find and dump it in.  Toss in some cinnamon sticks.  Core and segment a few whole apples.  Then toss in spiced rum to taste.  Wait.  I recall nothing after this.

Glug:

the spice brew:
3 cinnamon sticks
tablespoon orangepeel
tablespoon lemonpeel
chunk o ginger
10 cardamoms
10 cloves
4 allspice
1 c. water
1 c. sugar

Simmer then add 2 bottles of good vodka, 1 bottle of red wine, 1 bottle of brandy

Sinmmer till you're ready to get drunk.

You can also add oranges and raisens to the mix... the raisens get all plumpy and full of alcohol.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

My dad makes this every winter. 

[Kai]

Expect it to need a bit of salt.  I find that while flavorful, that dish is going to need a kick to wake it up.

Felix,
has made it a couple times this year.

Its also messy. And greasy. And oily. And bland. And....fuck, it was a waste of time and money.

So's this crock pot, for all the shitty things I've made in it and all the time I've wasted cleaning up after it and how sick I feel after eating the grease vat it becomes. It feels like a waste of time and energy, pretty much more or less what my whole life is feeling like right now.

I get so much more flavor cooking a vegetarian chilli or curry on the stove out of cans, and pleasure for that matter, than I have making a big pot roast and a bunch of chicken thighs in a crock pot and thinking something good would come out of it. And the kitchen is still a mess. And I keep loosing weight.

Is there chilli left over from last night? Yes, and it sounds helluva lot more appetizing right now.

[Jasper]

Didn't I mention the part where you refrigerate the stuff and take off the layer of solidified fat on top?

I remember saying something like that.

[Jasper]

Refrigerate anything slow cooked overnight, then remove the fat on top.  Otherwise your soup will have a fat layer on top that makes it hard to eat.

[Kai]

So, basically, any meat you cook in a crock pot, you have to cook all day, AND then leave in the fridge overnight to float the fat so you can remove it so you can wait a couple hours for it to heat up the next day again so you can eat it so it doesn't taste like a grease vat...

What is so totally awesome about that? Meanwhile, the meat is so totally bland and flavorless from sitting in water for how many hours.

I thought cooking with a crockpot was supposed to be great, or at least easier. All it seems is that its messy, fatty and time consuming.

[LMNO]

Whoa, back up.

BMW, Kai,  relate exactly what you did.

We (I) can help.

[Roo]

The whole point of the crock pot is to let shit cook for a really long time. But the meal is only as fatty as the fat you put in it. Same thing with flavor/blandness.

Things I would use a crock pot for are all things that I would make normally, that happen to take a long time to meld the flavors properly. Stews, chili, lentil or split pea soup, etc. A lot of those can be made in vegetarian versions, or have minimal meat. If you do opt for the fattier type of dish, you can often skim off the fat as it's cooking (it'll pool in nice big grease spots, which you can remove with a turkey baster or large spoon).

Really, a crock pot is just another method of cooking. It's just as messy, time consuming, and easy (or difficult) as any other way. And it takes a few tries to get everything just right. Maybe next time, try a vegetarian recipe instead of meat, and see if that makes a difference.

[Kai]

Whoa, back up.

BMW, Kai,  relate exactly what you did.

We (I) can help.

I put 5 unthawed chicken thighs in the crockpot (because I didn't have time to thaw them, I thought the whole thing would warm up slow enough so it wouldn't matter) with water, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, rosemary, tyme, sage and pepper. I started it last night at midnight. Around 7 in the morning,  I got up to find it had boiled over somewhat and liquid was all over the counter and floor. That was not something I liked waking up to, and it was sticky and slippery and gross smelling. So I cleaned up, turned it down to low, and went off to work on the caddisfly stuff and drawings for morphology. So, midnight, 6 in the morning....came back at 6, took the chicken out and it just fell off the bone. Some of the bones fell appart too. I put the chicken I took off the bone, the stuff that wasn't too greasy, and stuck it back in the pot with the carrots after draining the water still in a pot through a collinder (I don't have a sieve finer than that). Finding it was so freaking oily, and having already spend all this time and hungry and totally out of energy, I gave up on it, turned the crock to off, and left it there.

A few minutes ago, after trying to clean up the kitchen to the point where I could reheat some chilli, I put it in the fridge to work with maybe this weekend when I have time.

[Eater of Clowns]

I thought cooking with a crockpot was supposed to be great, or at least easier. All it seems is that its messy, fatty and time consuming.

I think it's been sufficiently proven that the point of a crockpot is to make dangerous alcoholic concoctions.

[Jasper]

Too much heat, if my opinion's wanted.  You want a low low simmer.  It should never get a chance to boil.

[LMNO]

holy fuck. Please hold until tomorrow moring.

[Kai]

holy fuck. Please hold until tomorrow moring.

I guess this means I did EVERYTHING wrong.

At least I can't get any worse.