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 - If your meal is going to be in the slow cooker for 8 hours or so, doesn't saving time seem like an oxymoron? The time savings comes in a few ways, but certainly being able to walk out of your kitchen while your meal is cooking does save you some time to do other things.
Gone are the days of someone being home all day to prepare the family meals. In this day and age of the busy, scattered family, we need to rely on more than one person to get dinner on the table. Because using a crock pot doesn't expose youngsters to hot burners and open flames, getting the little ones in the family, and the less experienced cooks, involved becomes much easier. Simply having someone there to help throw ingredients into the crock pot can be a big help. Now, it's a joint venture and meal preparation is shared, freeing up some much needed time for you to focus on other chores.
Standing over a stove, watching a pot boil, is certainly time wasted. We all know what it's like to monitor some soup or stew as it simmers on top of the stove, constantly checking its progress. Putting that same soup together in a crock pot, then walking away, frees up hours and hours of your time - time in which you can accomplish another task!
You're on your way home after a hard day of work and errands, and realize that there is nothing in the house for dinner. A quick stop at the grocery store is now on your agenda, and, of course, there is no such thing as a quick stop at the grocery store. Half an hour later, you emerge with food you didn't want, too many prepared dishes that cost way too much, but you don't have time to fix anything else. That stop just cost you an awful lot of precious time. By planning your crock pot meals ahead and shopping at a scheduled time, you could avoid those hasty stops at the grocery store, or worse, the convenience store. That time spent could be put to much better use, like sitting and enjoying your family at dinnertime!
Save Money With a Crock Pot - There are a couple schools of thought here. One is saving on your food, and the other is saving on energy. How exactly can cooking with a crock pot save on your food budget? And why would running a crock pot for six hours be cheaper than running your oven for three hours?
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.
Saving time and saving money seem to be pretty evident in these examples. Crock pots, when put to work, are an excellent way to not only save your budget and your time, for possibly your sanity, too. You have a family to take care of and a household to run. You definitely don't need to have that nightmare every night of your hungry family crying "when's dinner?" Now, you can answer "it's in the crock pot! - 30289
Save Time With a Crock Pot - If your meal is going to be in the slow cooker for 8 hours or so, doesn't saving time seem like an oxymoron? The time savings comes in a few ways, but certainly being able to walk out of your kitchen while your meal is cooking does save you some time to do other things.
Gone are the days of someone being home all day to prepare the family meals. In this day and age of the busy, scattered family, we need to rely on more than one person to get dinner on the table. Because using a crock pot doesn't expose youngsters to hot burners and open flames, getting the little ones in the family, and the less experienced cooks, involved becomes much easier. Simply having someone there to help throw ingredients into the crock pot can be a big help. Now, it's a joint venture and meal preparation is shared, freeing up some much needed time for you to focus on other chores.
Standing over a stove, watching a pot boil, is certainly time wasted. We all know what it's like to monitor some soup or stew as it simmers on top of the stove, constantly checking its progress. Putting that same soup together in a crock pot, then walking away, frees up hours and hours of your time - time in which you can accomplish another task!
You're on your way home after a hard day of work and errands, and realize that there is nothing in the house for dinner. A quick stop at the grocery store is now on your agenda, and, of course, there is no such thing as a quick stop at the grocery store. Half an hour later, you emerge with food you didn't want, too many prepared dishes that cost way too much, but you don't have time to fix anything else. That stop just cost you an awful lot of precious time. By planning your crock pot meals ahead and shopping at a scheduled time, you could avoid those hasty stops at the grocery store, or worse, the convenience store. That time spent could be put to much better use, like sitting and enjoying your family at dinnertime!
Save Money With a Crock Pot - There are a couple schools of thought here. One is saving on your food, and the other is saving on energy. How exactly can cooking with a crock pot save on your food budget? And why would running a crock pot for six hours be cheaper than running your oven for three hours?
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.
Saving time and saving money seem to be pretty evident in these examples. Crock pots, when put to work, are an excellent way to not only save your budget and your time, for possibly your sanity, too. You have a family to take care of and a household to run. You definitely don't need to have that nightmare every night of your hungry family crying "when's dinner?" Now, you can answer "it's in the crock pot! - 30289
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Take some time to pick out a few crockpot recipes so you can start saving time and money by Crock Pot Cooking in your kitchen, too!
