Why I Love My Slow Cooker

As soft, tender and lean meat seems to be the way to go with this diet, I figured that getting the slow cooker out is the way to go. I LOVE my slow cooker. I use it all of the time, winter and summer. Soups, stews, sauces, pot roasts, casseroles, puddings, you name it, I’ve cooked in a slow cooker. I’ve worn two out already in the 7 years I’ve lived in England, and I suspect 2014 will see the purchase of a new one when this one wears out. An oval one is best, you can get whole joints of meat in it that way.

My favourite slow cooker book is this one by http://bethhensperger.com/home.htm

What I really like about this one is that it’s for small quantities. One of the challenges with slow cooker recipes is that they assume that you have one of the big 4.5L ones and are cooking for a family of six. I have a 3L one and am cooking for me, sometimes the boyfriend and sometimes friends. I don’t need quantities to feed an army, and I don’t have the freezer space to contend with the leftovers. That’s one of the reasons I love this book. That, and most of the recipes in it are really good.

As yesterday marked my 7th anniversary of moving to the UK, I wanted to make something tasty to celebrate, so I used one of the above fore mentioned turkey drumsticks to it. The thing about turkey drumsticks is that they are still pretty lean for dark meat and are cheap as chips (£2 for a 2 pound drumstick) because no one wants them. There’s nothing wrong with them, people don't know how to cook them! Roasting doesn’t work. They have a lot of tendons and are very sinewy and are best braised or slow cooked. But cooked right, the meat falls off the bone, and there is loads of it! So I decided to make turkey pot roast from the above book, with a few minor alternations. Credit for this recipe completely lies with the author of the above book, Beth Hensperger.

1 turkey drumstick
Salt and freshly ground pepper
A few tablespoons of flour
2 tbsp of olive oil
½ onion
2 cloves of garlic
½ tsp of basil
1/4 tsp of thyme
1 cup of chicken broth
1 large carrot cut into small pieces
2 medium potatoes cut into small pieces

Cook on low for 7-9 hours.

As I’m not supposed to be eating onion and garlic (I could cry!), I peeled them and put them in the pot whole, then took them out at the end, so I got the flavour, but without the tummy upset.

With the chicken broth, I had some in the freezer, but there wasn’t quite a whole cup in the pack I defrosted, so I topped it up with a stock cube and boiling water.

I removed the skin from the turkey leg. I’m not one to eat the skin on poultry anyway, but seriously, ALWAYS skin poultry before you put it in the slow cooker. If you don’t, all of the fat from the skin goes to the bottom leaving a greasy, sticky, rather disgusting slime all over everything. After skinning it, I dusted it in with the salt, flour and pepper, and browned it on both sides in a frying pan. Meanwhile, I prepared the potatoes and carrots and put them in the bottom of the slow cooker. Once the turkey leg was browned, I popped that on top of the veg, deglazed the frying pan with the chicken stock, and put the rest of the ingredients into the crock and left it on low all day. The house smelled great!

Alas, a slight disaster struck at tea time. The boyfriend and I were planning to go to the cinema that evening and although it had been in the slow cooker for over 7 hours, the potatoes weren’t yet cooked and when I checked the internal temperature of the turkey leg, it was a few degrees short. It was really needing 9 hours, not 7! So everything got dumped into a pot on the stove and heat was turned up until it cooked, but that cooked off most of the liquid. Oh well! I took the meat out first and carved that on a cutting board, then dug out the (now stuck to the bottom of the pot) veg.  It was still tasty once it was cooked! And it didn’t hurt going down!

One other thing about cooking turkey drumsticks. They are a pain to carve, so once we had enough meat for dinner, I wrapped it up and popped it in the fridge overnight. This morning I had a good pick at it, as there was still loads of meat between all of the tendons, and managed to salvage almost of a cup of shredded turkey off of it to use in soup, pasta, sandwiches, whatever. And now the bone is boiling in a pot for stock and my house smells amazing! Not bad for all of £2!