Whether your slow cooker is a key part of your cooking regime, a recent addition to your kitchen or a forgotten piece of kit lurking at the back of a cupboard, these helpful tips and tricks will turn this machine into your trusted sous-chef. With tempting recipes to try, from pasta sauces to sliders, you'll find it can be used all year round with delicious results – and minimal effort.
Love the idea of getting your slow cooker to do the hard work for you? Click or scroll through our gallery to discover how to get the most out of your machine.
Slow cookers generally come in small, medium or large. Even if you're just a household of two, it's worth buying a slightly larger slow cooker than you think you need; economic slow cookers are brilliant for batch cooking and you want to take full advantage of that. Either freeze leftovers or keep them in the fridge for another day.
Let's face it, nobody wants to have to get up in the morning and begin chopping ingredients for the evening meal before even having breakfast. So do your prep the evening before and have everything ready to go in the fridge. Then, in the morning, just switch on your slow cooker and throw your ingredients in before getting on with your day.
You'll save a significant amount of time by preheating your slow cooker for around 20 minutes before adding any ingredients. If you're new to slow cooking, it's also worth following recipes specifically written for slow cookers to begin with, until you gain more confidence and a greater understanding of how they work.
Slow cookers might be all about ease but the basics still matter. If a recipe calls for vegetables, make sure you cut them into equally sized pieces, so that they cook evenly. Hard root vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots, onions, parsnips and turnips, are all really well-suited to slow cooking, as they retain their shape and flavour even when cooked for hours.
A slow cooker should be filled to a minimum of half full and a maximum of three-quarters full. If there's too much in there, it won't work as efficiently and ingredients may spill over and make a mess, which is not obviously ideal.
It's worth buying a reusable, refillable oil spray, so you can prevent food sticking to your slow cooker and cut down on washing up. You can buy disposable plastic liners but they aren't environmentally friendly. Once you’ve preheated your slow cooker, simply spray the entire liner, then add your ingredients.
Temping as it may be to remove the lid of your slow cooker and take a peek at how a dish is coming along, try to resist the urge to do so. Removing the lid before your meal is ready means you’ll lose valuable heat and increase the cooking time.
The heat in a slow cooker comes from below, so layering the ingredients is key. Those that take the longest to cook should go in first, followed by seasonings and sauce. If, for example, you’re making a beef stew, add the seared beef pieces to the bottom of the slow cooker, followed by the carrots, with the potatoes and stock on top. This means that, as the hours pass, the beef will become meltingly soft, while the potatoes turn tender, rather than mushy.
This advice goes against conventional cooking wisdom, but when making a stew in a slow cooker, it’s imperative to avoid stirring it. Rather than mixing the ingredients together, you want them to remain in their layers, so that each element cooks perfectly. Add your ingredients, set the slow cooker and forget about it until dinner time – that’s the beauty of slow cooker cooking, after all.
If you put meat straight from the fridge into a slow cooker, it will significantly increase the cooking time. Allow it to come to room temperature first and it will cook more evenly, in less time. To see what we mean, try this slow-cooked Lebanese lamb recipe, which sees the meat marinated overnight with spices, olive oil and lemon, before being cooked low and slow. The end result is perfect for stuffing flatbreads and topping pizzas.
If you don't fry spices before adding them to a slow cooker, they’ll taste raw and harsh and their flavours won’t be fully released. A good example is our recipe for carne asada nachos, where beef silverside is marinated in spices and browned before being slow cooked. It's then shredded to serve with tortilla chips, guacamole and grated cheese.
Adding dairy products to your slow cooker too early will cause them to split and curdle, so ensure milk, yogurt, cream and the like are added right at the end of the cooking time for a smooth, velvety end result. A perfect example is our vegetarian aubergine masala, where chunks of aubergine are slow cooked in spices, tomatoes and almonds, before cream and butter are added at the end for a wonderfully silky, rich sauce.
Tender, falling-off-the-bone smokehouse short ribs are always a winner but they do need cooking low and slow, or they'll be tough and chewy. The good news is that popping them in the slow cooker is easier and more economical than using an oven. Our recipe sees the ribs marinated in spices overnight before being cooked in the marinade for maximum flavour.
Tender greens, such as asparagus, peas and beans, have a tendency to overcook and become mushy in a slow cooker. They only take minutes to blanch on the hob anyway, so save them for speedy cooking, rather than slow. If they're part of a recipe you're making in a slow cooker, either cook separately and add to your finished dish, or throw in the pot right at the end of cooking time. They'll only need a few minutes to cook through.
Fish and shellfish cook so quickly, they aren't suited to being simmered in slow cooker. In our prawn curry recipe, the slow cooker is used to make the creamy, lightly spiced coconut curry sauce, with the prawns, fresh spinach and lime added for the final 10 minutes.
A slow cooker will never reach the temperature required to boil off alcohol. If, for example, you're making a stew with red wine, bring the wine to the boil on the hob for a few minutes first before adding it to the slow cooker. Otherwise, you'll end up imbuing your dish with the raw, bitter taste of alcohol.
Raw kidney beans contain a natural toxin that's only eliminated when boiled. After soaking dried beans overnight, bring them to the boil on the hob for at least 10 minutes or cook them fully before adding to a slow cooker chilli con carne for the last 30 minutes. The same timing applies to canned beans.
Don't even attempt to add couscous to a slow cooker – it’ll just end up as a ball of mush. Couscous doesn’t really need 'proper' cooking at all – just cover with boiling water or stock, add a lid and leave it to steam.
Lean chicken breasts dry out and become rather chewy in a slow cooker. Good value thighs are a much better option, as they turn meltingly tender. In this recipe, thighs are slow cooked in barbecue sauce and spices, before being shredded for a great burger or sandwich filler.
Browning meat adds colour, taste and texture to the final dish. Even if your slow cooker does have a sauté function, it's best to brown meat, onions and garlic on the hob first. Try our easy recipe for slow-cooked spaghetti Bolognese to see just how tasty this classic dish can be.
Rice doesn't really work in a slow cooker – it ends up brittle around the edges and uncooked in the centre. Given that it takes less than 30 minutes to cook on the hob or in a rice cooker – and there's a variety of pre-cooked rice pouches you can buy – it's best to cook it separately.
Less expensive cuts of meat require long, slow cooking to tenderise them. But the time spent is worth it, as they have so much flavour. We're thinking lamb shanks, pork shoulder, beef shin and brisket and short ribs. They're all perfect candidates for the slow cooker, which will do all the hard work for you.
When converting a standard recipe to a slow cooker one, a general rule of thumb is to cut the liquid content by half. Slow cooker dishes don’t reduce as much as those cooked on the hob or in the oven, and vegetables tend to release a lot of water. If your dish does end up too watery, the quickest solution is to transfer the excess liquid to a saucepan, heat it on high until thickened, then return the reduced sauce to the dish.
Any delicate ingredients, such as soft herbs like coriander, mint, basil and parsley, should be added once the dish is ready to serve. Ditto with items like spring onions, fresh spinach, lime or lemon juice, otherwise their delicate flavours will be lost.
Usually, we'd recommend cooking pasta separately on the hob if it's served as an accompaniment to a slow-cooked pasta sauce. On occasions when the pasta is included in the dish, it should be added 30 minutes or so before the end of the cooking time, otherwise it's likely to be overcooked and soggy. In a bespoke recipe incorporating pasta the timings work perfectly, though, and our chicken fajita pasta dish is a case in point.
Quickly cooked minced meat, whether pork, beef or lamb, can be on the tough side and quite flavourless. With that in mind, why not have a go at making your favourite mince dishes in the slow cooker? To kick off, try this seriously tasty Vietnamese-inspired recipe for pork lettuce cups, where the mince is slow cooked with chillies, garlic, lemongrass and spices, before being piled into lettuce leaves with chopped peanuts, spring onions, mint and coriander.
Get the recipe for pork lettuce cups here
Now read about the slow cooker mistakes most people make
Last updated by Emily Shardlow-Price.