Casserole Crock Pot Recipes and Tips - Recipes That Crock! (2024)

FAQs

Can I use a slow cooker instead of a casserole dish? ›

Slow cookers are the set-it-and-forget-it heroes of the kitchen. If your favorite casseroles, soups and braised meat recipes are designed for the oven or stovetop, you can easily cook them in the slow cooker instead.

When we look at the material, it's evident that slow cookers and Crockpots consist of the same three components: Glass lid, pot, and heating element. However, Crockpots generally have ceramic or porcelain pots, while most slow cookers have a metal pot.

Our Best Ideas for the Slow Cooker

We rely on it for comfort food season (think soups and stews, hearty chilis and fork-tender roasts) as well as Sunday dinners—like meatballs and red sauce with that simmered-all-day flavor. But, this handy countertop appliance can do so much more.

For many dishes, particularly soups and stews, you really can just throw all the ingredients in. It can be nice to cook the onions beforehand, as the flavour is different to when you put them in raw, but experiment both ways as you may find you prefer one.

The difference is the time it takes to reach that temperature. Low: 7-8 hours to reach the simmer point. High: 3-4 hours to reach the simmer point.

Can you put a Pyrex dish in a slow cooker? Yes, of course. Pyrex was developed to withstand heat and to be shatter-resistant. Even better - there are commercially available slow cooker liners that are disposable after each use.

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.

Oven cooking is often faster than slow cooking. As a general rule, a dish that takes 6–8 hours on a slow cooker's low setting might only need 2–3 hours in the oven at 325°F.

One of the best time-saving kitchen tips I've found is that you can cook ground beef in a slow cooker. Recipes that call for ground beef usually require you to brown it first (slow cooker or otherwise).

Can I leave food in a slow cooker overnight off? ›

Slow cookers are designed to be left to cook for long periods of time, so the truth is that it's entirely safe to leave your slow cooker on overnight or throughout the day if you are out the house all day, if you follow all the directions and the manufacturer's instructions.

Choose the best size and shape slow cooker for baking. For cakes and pies, I recommend a 5- or 6-quart round slow cooker. You can fit a 1-quart round baking dish with a lid, as well as a 2-quart round baking dish with a lid, into your 5- or 6-quart round slow cooker.

The low setting of a slow cooker ranges from 190°F to 200°F. To mimic this in an oven, set your temperature to approximately 325°F. The high setting of a slow cooker ranges from 290°F to 300°F; in oven terms, this is roughly equivalent to 375°F.

But you can also use your slow cooker like an auxiliary oven and stick your baking dish, cake pan or pie plate into the standard insert that came with it. It helps to use a short wire rack to raise your pan off the bottom so the heat can circulate all around it as it does in a conventional oven.

For slow cooked recipes, we get far superior results with a heavy pot in a conventional oven compared to a standalone slow cooker. Meat from the oven is more tender and moist. Meat from the slow cooker is dried out, yet sits in a puddle of liquid.