What A Crock!: Taking Your Slow Cooker to Another Level.

The basic slow cooker has long been regarded as a useful gadget for soups and stews, but there is so much more that you can do with it. I have included a number of recipes to cover the traditional things you might want to prepare, but I also wanted to demonstrate some of the flexibility that it has. You can make basic bread, fix your steel cut oatmeal or slow cook those baby back ribs.



Also, this appliance can prepare the meal with minimal clean up, low energy consumption and without heating up the entire kitchen; all while being left unattended.



This cookbook is designed for "culinary challenged" as well as the typical cook. When we began creating recipes for CincyShopper, we found that people like the recipes and love the pictures. We got lots of feedback about how the pictures let them know what it should look like. I didn't realize exactly what they were telling me until I had one reader point to an example from another site, which had gone poorly for her. Upon looking at the recipe and the picture, the problem was obvious. The beautiful picture was not made from the ingredients they had listed. It was probably a stock picture they had bought because they lacked photography skills, but this poor reader had spent a lot of time and frustration trying to achieve this unattainable image of the dish.



After a while, we began selling versions of the recipes to other websites to share with their readers. We looked at it as a way to make a little extra income while helping readers of other blogs avoid having their cooking adventures go horribly wrong. We make and tweak each recipe to get the taste just right. Then, we photograph it to show you how it should look. No surprises. No stock photos.



This is a selection of some of my favorite slow cooker recipes. Here are the ones included:

BREAKFAST:

Breakfast Casserole

French Toast

Steel Cut Oatmeal



SIDE DISHES & APPETIZERS:

Basic Bread

Beans with Ground Beef

Cocktail Meatballs

Mac and Cheese

Mexican Dip



SOUPS:

Bean and Bacon Soup

Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Creamy Tomato Soup

French Onion Soup

Potato Soup

Split Pea Soup with Ham



MAIN DISHES:

Baked Pasta

Cheesesteaks

Chicken Tacos

Coke Baby Back Ribs

Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork

French Dip

Hawaiian Barbecue Chicken

Pepper Steak

Root Beer Chicken

Rustic Beef Stew