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Stir Up Some Flavor For Dinner Tonight
Ellen Davidson
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Many mothers come home from a long day at work, and then immediately have to start on making dinner, doing the dishes, a few loads of laundry, giving baths to the kids, putting them to bed, and only then getting a few short minutes to themselves and their spouses, before they have to go to bed and start the process all over again the next morning.
One way to beat the monotony of this is to use a slow cooker. You plug it in before you leave for the office, add the food, and then by the time you come home it is ready to put on the children’s plates and serve. Slow cookers are set at a lower temperature, but since it sits on a hot plate and the entire container isn’t heated you may have concerns or worries about it burning other objects while you are away. A slow cooker can help to increase the flavor of your food. By stirring food that you cook with a slow cooker, you can ensure that the food is being evenly cooked through out, and the flavors do not cook into the food that is only on the bottom, but all of the food. With foods, such as Bar-B-Q ribs, the top half of the meat may be outside of the sauce. By turning it over through out the cooking process, you ensure that the meat does not dry out from exposure to air, but that the BBQ sauce is able to continue marinating the ribs, throughout the cooking process. Slow cookers use moist heat to cook the food, so it takes longer than if you put it in the oven or on the stove, but slow cooking gives the food time to soak up added flavor and stay moist.
Vegetables take longer to cook than most meats, in a slow cooker. To heat them to the proper temperature and to ensure that they are cooked thoroughly, cut them into same size pieces and place them on the bottom of the cooker. They will receive the most heat and will be ready to eat at the same time as the meat is. Meat does not have to be precooked before placing inside the slow cooker, although it does have a nicer appeal, and reduces the amount of fat that is in the meat. It is best to remove as much of the fat from the meat as you can, before placing it within the slow cooker.
If the meat that you are adding does not take as long as the vegetables will, you can also add it later by stirring it in to the pot. If you would like to add extra spices and seasonings that may lose their flavor, you can stir them in closer to the time that the food will be ready to serve. Please be advised that any time you open the lid of your slow cooker, it does reduce the heat and moist within the pot, and will take longer to heat the food.
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