Slow cooking with the barbecue mat

A few weeks ago, I wrote¹ about ordering the 'Reusable Non-Stick BBQ Grill Mat' that finally arrived on Tuesday evening whilst I was rehearsing for the New Year Ceremony. I managed to extract the parcel from the kibbutz 'Post Office', and yesterday evening I had the chance to use it in the slow cooker. 

Below are two pictures: one with meat and mat, and one with vegetables on top of the mat.

The mat can be seen quite clearly in the picture without meat (left) and less clearly in the picture with vegetables - obviously because the vegetables are hiding the mat. It can be seen in the top right hand corner of the picture.

Did the mat do its job? Definitely yes! When cooking finished, I was able to scrape the cooked vegetables from the mat without them getting entangled with the meat. I then pulled the mat out of the slow cooker (this is slightly difficult as the sides of the cooker are very hot) then scooped the meat out. I think that next time I will add some string (or similar) to the mat to facilitate pulling it out of the cooker; if I put string on opposite sides then maybe I'll be able to pull the mat out with the vegetables still on it, making it even easier to decant them into a dish.

Both the meat and vegetables were cooked to perfection, so the mat had no effect on this, as I suspected. I think I know why sometimes one or two lumps of meat are cooked but are not tender: the amount of meat that I bought (1.6kg), when cut, filled out the bottom of the slow cooker, but had there been more meat, this would have been placed on top of the bottom layer and would not necessarily be covered in liquid. Something to bear in mind for next time.

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