Why Cook With A Crock Pot?

There are really two basic reasons folks like to cook with a crock pot, also called a slow cooker. One reason is to save time, the other is to save money. Let's see if there is any truth to either of those reasons.

Save Time With a Crock Pot - This may seem like an oxymoron to some people. After all, how can having a meal in the crock pot for eight hours save time? It all depends on your lifestyle and your routine for dinnertime, but most have to agree that getting dinner in the crock pot, then walking away from any further time spent in the kitchen, definitely frees up time.

Like most families, you probably cannot designate one person to do the cooking each and every day. With our busy schedules, we have to get a bit of help in the kitchen. Because we're not dealing with hot burners and open flames, we can recruit even our youngsters to help out with the meal preparation. Chores such as adding ingredients to the crock pot can now be delegated, freeing up your time for other tasks. Also, many recipes for the crock pot are kept very simple, making them ideal for the cooking-challenged family members. Everybody can help!

Even standing over a stove and stirring a pot, watching it boil so to speak, is time that you could have for something else. Once the ingredients are in the crock pot, you can walk away and get on with your day and your errands. When you walk back into your kitchen, you have a delicious meal without that time-consuming pot watching. That's certainly a time saver.

There is no such thing as a quick stop at the grocery store. But, when you're running late and there is no dinner planned, you think you can do just that - make a quick stop. After a half hour or more wandering around the aisles of the grocery store, you find yourself grabbing a few prepackaged meals and heading home. Now, you've not only put off dinner until later, but you've spent money on food you didn't really want to eat, or feed your family. With a crock pot meal planned and shopped for ahead of time, you can add that 30 minutes on to the end of your busy day and spend it with your family, instead of running around the grocery store.

Save Money With a Crock Pot - You've got to cook dinner anyway, so how can cooking in a crock pot save money? Food is food - it all costs the same, right? But, there are a couple ways that you can save money both in the grocery store and on your energy bill when you use a crock pot.

You can now walk into your grocery store's meat department and skip right past the expensive cuts of meat. A crock pot's magic is best illustrated in turning cheaper cuts of meat into tender, fall apart with a fork, meals. Budget cuts of meat contain sinew and more connective tissue, which can be tough if not cooked properly. A crock pot is the perfect environment for these budget cuts. Cooked slowly, on a low temperature, in a moisture rich pot, breaks down this tough tissue and turns even the toughest cut into a tender, succulent morsel. You can now buy pork shoulder, rump roasts, and briskets, and enjoy excellent results. Also, soups and stews, the best budget-wise meals we know, are perfectly suited to crock pot cooking.

Even though you would cook a pot roast in the oven for half as long as you would cook it in a crock pot, the oven uses a lot more energy. Your oven uses 2500 watts, while a crock pot is normally rated at about 200 watts. That means that a 3 hour pot roast in the oven uses 10 kWh, while a 6 hour pot roast in the crock pot uses about 1.2 kWh. These are estimates, of course, but you must admit that even the most efficient full-sized oven can't compete with a crock pot when it comes to energy savings. A crock pot can be considered a miniature oven just to get an idea of how and why it would save you money spent on your energy bill.

If you are a busy family with children, you know how often you get stuck during that evening rush without dinner plans. Have you called your husband to pick up dinner at the fast food place more than once this week? You know that is a real budget-buster! While you're running your child to piano lessons, or baseball practice, your crock pot can be working away cooking up dinner, saving you from yet another stop of the fast food place. No more frantic calls to the spouse for take out! That's more money saved.

Save Both Time and Money With a Crock Pot - Cooking larger portions, and planning for your leftovers, is one way to save both time and money. With a large crock pot, a 6 quart size, you can cook larger cuts of meat, turn that meat into several dinners, then package up the leftovers for lunches. By cooking one large meal, you have now created several dinners plus lunches all in about the same time it takes to cook one meal. Not only are you saving energy by cooking more than meal at a time, but you're saving the time it takes each day to put together a new meal. Plus, if eating lunch out is a routine for you, just think of the money you'll be saving by bringing your own home-cooked meal to eat each day. And, maybe instead of using your lunch hour to run out and get something to eat, you can use the extra time to do something you enjoy.

I think these reasons for cooking with a crock pot will convince most folks that it just makes sense. Using a crock pot does save time and money, yes, but above all it saves your sanity when you've got a busy family! That hectic "what's for dinner" cry when everyone finally comes through the door each night no longer has to overwhelm you - not when you've got dinner in the crock pot!

Try your hand at some new Slowcooker Recipes to save both time and money, but especially to get your family hooked on slowcooker cooking!