Sumptuous Sunday 2

This really should be 'Sumptuous Saturday' as I'm not doing any cooking today....

For Friday night, I prepared a beef stew, basically cholent, in the slow cooker. Unfortunately, this was not a success. Although each ingredient was cooked, the dish as a whole didn't come together. I think that I'm going to abandon this dish and go back to the simple minced meat casserole which I used to cook on the gas.

On Saturday, I cooked a whole chicken in the slow cooker. As ever, I was dubious about placing a whole chicken into the cooker with no liquid, but the results were astounding. Along with the chicken, I placed potato and onion slices in the pot. These came out very nicely cooked and next time, I'll put in more potato, in larger pieces. Although I used some celery as a spice, this wasn't very noticeable in the final result. The chicken was cooked for four hours on high.

I decided to find out what 'high' and 'low' really mean. 'High' is 300 degrees Fahrenheit, which translates to 149 degrees Centigrade; 200 degrees F is 93 degrees C. Both are somewhat higher figures than I had expected. I wonder what the advantages are of cooking a whole chicken at 149 degrees for four hours as opposed to roasting it for two hours at 175 degrees. I suppose that it depends on how much electricity (how many watts) the slow cooker and oven are using. Finding this out for the slow cooker should be easy, but I don't know whether I can find out the oven's requirements.