21 Delicious Summer Slow Cooker Recipes (to keep your kitchen cool!) (2024)

FAQs

Is crockpot good in summer? ›

When it's too hot to turn on your oven, don't! Your slow cooker can handle everything from weeknight dinners to family barbecues. It might even be the best-kept secret for making fabulous summer desserts.

It Won't Heat Up Your House

But don't forget your trusty slow cooker. This appliance won't warm up your kitchen while preparing a home-cooked meal. Here's a barbecued pork chop supper to get your started.

If you take an extra 10 minutes to sauté the aromatics before scraping them into the slow-cooker, the finished dish will have deeper flavor and better texture. (And some new slow-cookers allow you to sauté right in the insert, so you don't have to wash a separate skillet.)

You can slow-cook everything from classic comfort food (think meatloaf and macaroni and cheese) to regional specialties like Slow Cooker Cornbread Stuffing, BBQ Brisket, and Chicken and Dumplings, to name a few.

Is it safe to leave a slow cooker on for 12 hours? Yes, you can use your slow cooker for longer than eight hours, as long as you keep an eye on it. Many slow cookers do have an automatic shutoff after 24 hours.

This is normal, especially after prolonged use. Therefore, do not touch the outside of the slow cooker, as this can cause burns.

Food texture changes: Canned foods, such as vegetables, can become too mushy in a slow cooker. It's better to use them fresh or frozen. But, frozen veggies tend to make the texture of the dish more “watery”.

The Smartest Place to Set Up Your Slow Cooker: The Stovetop!

The stovetop isn't generally in use at the same time as the slow cooker and is designed to take the heat, moisture, splatters, or drips that might come from the cooker. Ideally you're using this spot when you have to leave the slow cooker unattended all day.

Testing Your Crock Pot Temperature

The temperature should be 180 degrees – 200 degrees. If the temperature is higher than 200 degrees, your food may overcook. If the temperature is lower than 180 degrees, you should discard the crock pot since your food will not reach a safe temperature quickly enough.

What is the best meat to slow cook? ›

Choose the right cut: Chuck roasts, short ribs, pork shoulders and lamb shanks (think fatty and tougher meats) become meltingly tender with the moist, low heat of a slow cooker. Leaner cuts like pork tenderloin tend to dry out. Likewise, dark meat chicken — thighs, drumsticks, etc.

Onion - the One Ingredient You Must Pre-Cook Before Adding to Your Slow Cooker! Never add onions to a slow cooker dish that you haven't sautéed first – I find you get that slight raw onion flavour throughout and it just ruins the dish for me. I really think it's worth the extra effort.

A slow cooker and a Crockpot are the same thing, essentially. A slow cooker is an appliance of which there are lots of brands. Crockpot is one brand of slow cooker. Crockpot popularized slow cookers when they launched their version in the 1970s.

✔️ Instant Pots are multi-functional.

Many people think that Instant Pots are just electric pressure cookers, but they're actually multi-cookers that cover a wide variety of functions: They slow cook, steam, warm, saute and work as a rice cooker in addition to pressure cooking.

"Raw meat is a slow-cooker staple, but you may need to add it to the pot before adding other ingredients like green vegetables," she shared. "Browning meat in a skillet before adding it to the slow cooker has been a game-changer for my slow-cooker meals.

The 'Warm' setting is NOT for cooking! The 'Warm' setting is ONLY for keeping already-cooked food at the perfect serving temperature until mealtime. To prevent food from dipping into temperatures that aren't food-safe, you shouldn't use the 'Warm' setting for more than 4 hours.

The general rule of thumb is that 2-4 hours is the maximum length of time you can leave food in a slow cooker on warm. After this, it needs to be cooled and transferred into the refrigerator.

While there are some disadvantages to using a slow cooker, such as the risk of overcooking food or forgetting to turn it off, these generally pale in comparison to the benefits. For busy families or those who enjoy coming home to a hot meal, a slow cooker can be a great addition to any kitchen.

I've been noticing more and more complaints about food burning and overcooking in the crockpot. It has been established that newer crockpots, those manufactured in the past five or six years, are cooking at temperatures significantly higher than in the past.