A few weeks ago, I suggested to the person who organises activities for the 'third age', i.e. pensioners, on the kibbutz that I give a talk about the wonders of slow cooking. Fortunately the date was set sufficiently far ahead that I would be able to restore my health after the viral/bacterial infection that I suffered (the date was set two weeks before I fell ill). I thought it best that I prepare my speech in advance, so I'm writing the first version here: obviously this is in English and I'll be talking in Hebrew, but that won't be a problem. Over we go ....
I would like to start by saying that I think that everybody should be able to cook. By 'cook', I mean something more advanced than an omelette, but not necessarily a three course meal for ten people. I also think that cooking should be easy - I don't like recipes that require more than fifteen minutes preparation time. I can cook complete meals in fifteen minutes! Over the years, I've seen that adding fancy steps to preparation makes no difference to the final result, and so it seems that simpler is better. One final belief: cooking should be successful; I don't like recipes that can fail and that have a series of conditions that have to be met in order to produce a successful dish. That's actually the reason why I don't like to bake: everything has to be just so and the conditions have to be right in order to have a good outcome.
I should add that my stomach doesn't tolerate spicy food and that the plain but tasty results from the slow cooker are ideal for me.
Using a slow cooker is easy and it's almost impossible to ruin a dish, which is why I want to talk about this cooking technique today. But first, I want to say a few words about what is not possible to cook with a slow cooker. There are many different cooking techniques and each has its own characteristics, although sometimes the same characteristic is shared by a few techniques. Cooking in an oven is generally carried out at a temperature of around 170°C and there is a scientific reason for doing so: this is the temperature at which the Maillard reaction takes place. Does anyone know what this is? Chemically, it's a reaction between sugars and the amino acids in protein that produces the characteristic brown colour and smell of baked goods. We like this smell, so that's why we cook at this temperature. Slow cooking occurs at a much lower temperature so there's no browning of foods and cooked food doesn't look cooked.
I want to change the subject slightly and talk a little about boiling eggs. The 'white' of an egg, a protein called albumin, is a very viscous liquid in an uncooked egg. But when we place an egg in water and heat the water to boiling, the structure of the protein undergoes a transformation and the albumin becomes solid. I apologise that I don't know the scientific word for this in Hebrew. What happens physically is that the heat causes the protein molecules to change shape. When something is cooked in the oven, this change in shape happens very fast and is irreversible.
Slow cooking works at a temperature of about 65°C; this is hot enough that we don't have to worry about bacteria but is also significant for another reason. This is approximately the temperature at which the protein collagen - found in skin and connective tissue that surrounds muscle fibres - turns into a different protein called gelatin that is the basis of jelly and more importantly, improves the taste of food. So food cooked in a slow cooker will have plenty of gelatin and will taste good. This transformation doesn't occur in oven cooking.
OK, enough science! I know of two sizes of slow cookers: one is about 6.5 litres volume and the other is 8 litres. The smaller cooker is suitable for two to four portions, whereas the larger cooker is suitable for upto ten portions. Of course, it very much depends what we're cooking as to how much room the uncooked food will take in the cooker. One thing that is very important: always leave plenty of room between the top of the food and the lid of the cooker. The cooker should be at most 2/3 full. I'll explain later why that space has to be there. One can buy a slow cooker from between 150 - 200 NIS in several shops at the local mall.
A slow cooker is basically a heavy ceramic pot with a lid; the pot sits in a metallic envelope that has a heating element powered by electricity. I would show you the insides of my slow cooker, but I'm currently cooking something in there for afterwards. First the uncooked food is placed in the pot, then the cooker is turned on. There are normally three settings: high, low and warm. I recommend only using the 'high' setting. Generally speaking, there is no need to place any liquid in the pot; the heat causes water to evaporate from the uncooked food and it's this steam that actually cooks the food. That's the reason why space is needed above the food and between the lid - the steam can collect there. Also, one never takes the lid of the cooker before the food is cooked; doing so causes the steam to escape. If one does open the lid, one has to add half an hour to the cooking time to make up for the lost steam. Incidentally, it is possible to cook frozen food in the slow cooker without defrosting, but one should add at least half an hour to the cooking time in this case.
I'm now going to give you some recipes and let's start with a very simple one: believe it or not, one can cook a whole chicken in the slow cooker! As I mentioned earlier, because the cooking occurs at a much lower temperature than that of an oven, the results are somewhat different, and one can argue that they are even better in the slow cooker. One places the chicken in the pot, adds to it a diced onion, some parsley and finally sliced carrot and courgette. It's important to slice the vegetables to enlarge their surface area: this will release more water that helps the cooking. It's also possible to add potato cubes or even frozen beans; I find it best to put such additions into the little plastic punnets in which are sold mushrooms (one can also add mushrooms!): the punnet has holes in it, so the steam can cook the vegetables but the punnet keeps them separate so that they can be served separately. Place the punnet on top off the vegetables. Turn the heat onto high and cook the chicken for about five hours. One can probably cook for a little less without any problem, and cooking more only improves the flavour. There's no such thing as overcooking in a slow cooker! The result will be a very tender chicken that falls apart, along with tasty vegetables and some amount of chicken soup.
One can also use chicken portions instead of a whole chicken; this allows more meat to be cooked at the same time although there will be less gelatin. Put the chicken at the bottom of the pot and the vegetables on top; this way, the chicken will always be moist. Having the vegetables on the bottom and the chicken on top runs the risk of drying the meat slightly. As the pieces of chicken are not as thick, three to four hours cooking is enough.
I was in Milano last year, and their signature dish is 'Osso buco' - big slabs of beef cooked with vegetables. I cooked this a few times in the slow cooker, but I think that the cut of meat used is too expensive. It's strange, but the cuts of beef that are good in the slow cooker are generally considered to be lower quality cuts and so cheaper, whereas the expensive cuts of beef - steak especially - are not suited to slow cooking. This is because of the amount of connective tissue - this isn't good in a steak as it makes the meat chewy, but turns into tasty gelatin when cooked in the slow cooker.
From experience, about 1.5 kg of cut #8 cut into cubes fits into the slow cooker in one layer. Any more than this will mean a second layer of meat and this is liable to cause the extra cubes to dry out. On top of the cubes, I place this mat that was intended for something else that I cut to the correct size. See how I've attached strings at either end - this is to help pull the mat out at the end. In a frying pan, I cook diced onion, carrot and celery in a little olive oil, then when the vegetables are soft, I add some white wine. This mixture then gets poured onto the mat, and the slow cooker is turned on. After five hours cooking, I turn the cooker off then gently pull the mat up by the strings; the sides of the cooker are very hot! I serve the vegetables in one dish and the meat in another. Often I will save the liquid that's left in the pot for cooking another time.
The final dish that I'll talk about today is deboned chicken thighs with sauce. Normally I trim excess fat from the thighs but this isn't essential. As usual, one places the thighs at the bottom of the pot. One tray of nine thighs is about two layers deep in the pot; this is less of a problem that with the beef cubes as those are much thicker. In a bowl, one mixes two spoonfuls of mayonnaise with two spoonfuls of apricot jam and a teaspoon full of mustard, until a creamy texture is achieved. This is poured onto the meat - I normally use a kitchen brush to distribute the sauce evenly, although I'm not sure that this is actually necessary. On top of the sauce I sprinkle chopped onions. One then cooks for three hours. As they always say in cooking programmes, "here's something that I prepared in advance" - I've been cooking this dish in the slow cooker here and have been stretching my talk out to give the food enough time to cook.
It is possible to cook fish in a slow cooker, but it's not a good idea as the loss of connective tissue will cause the fish to fall apart. There used to be sold thick circular cuts of salmon with a little spine in the middle; I used to cook this in the slow cooker with some water and herbs but there's really no point in doing so. Fish should be cooked as little as possible - fifteen minutes in the oven and we're done.
Before I answe any questions, I would like to make one final observation. It is possible to cook rice in the slow cooker along with meat, as long as one doesn't mind having everything mixed up together. In my opinion, cooking rice with chicken together improves the taste of the rice. But: normally I cook one cup of rice with two cups of water. Don't be tempted and say that the steam in the slow cooker will cook the rice; instead add two cups of hot water (or maybe a little less) to the pot as the rice will absorb this water and not leave it available to be turned into steam.
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