| Will Cooking With A Crock Pot Really Save Me Time And Money? |
| Written by Susanne Myers |
| Thursday, 10 December 2009 08:35 |
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There are really two basic reasons folks like to cook with a crock pot, also called a slow cooker. One reason is to save time, the other is to save money. Let's see if there is any truth to either of those reasons.
There are really two basic reasons folks like to cook with a crock pot, also called a slow cooker. One reason is to save time, the other is to save money. Let's see if there is any truth to either of those reasons. Save Time With a Crock Pot - If your meal is going to be in the slow cooker for 8 hours or so, doesn't saving time seem like an oxymoron? The time savings comes in a few ways, but certainly being able to walk out of your kitchen while your meal is cooking does save you some time to do other things. Like most families, you probably cannot designate one person to do the cooking each and every day. With our busy schedules, we have to get a bit of help in the kitchen. Because we're not dealing with hot burners and open flames, we can recruit even our youngsters to help out with the meal preparation. Chores such as adding ingredients to the crock pot can now be delegated, freeing up your time for other tasks. Also, many recipes for the crock pot are kept very simple, making them ideal for the cooking-challenged family members. Everybody can help! Even standing over a stove and stirring a pot, watching it boil so to speak, is time that you could have for something else. Once the ingredients are in the crock pot, you can walk away and get on with your day and your errands. When you walk back into your kitchen, you have a delicious meal without that time-consuming pot watching. That's certainly a time saver. Frantic stops at the grocery store to quick grab something for dinner are a huge waste of time. You know you're going to spend 30 minutes or more wandering around the store trying to think of something to cook for dinner. Of course, as time goes by, the choices for dinner start to narrow as time starts to slip further and further away. Planning two or three simple crock pot meals for the week allows you to consolidate your shopping trips into one instead of wasting time stopping every night trying to figure out what to cook. The time it takes to plan the meals and the shopping trip never adds up to the time you spend stopping every night in a panic. And, it's so nice to come straight home after a busy day to enjoy a delicious meal. Save Money With a Crock Pot - There are a couple schools of thought here. One is saving on your food, and the other is saving on energy. How exactly can cooking with a crock pot save on your food budget? And why would running a crock pot for six hours be cheaper than running your oven for three hours? You can now walk into your grocery store's meat department and skip right past the expensive cuts of meat. A crock pot's magic is best illustrated in turning cheaper cuts of meat into tender, fall apart with a fork, meals. Budget cuts of meat contain sinew and more connective tissue, which can be tough if not cooked properly. A crock pot is the perfect environment for these budget cuts. Cooked slowly, on a low temperature, in a moisture rich pot, breaks down this tough tissue and turns even the toughest cut into a tender, succulent morsel. You can now buy pork shoulder, rump roasts, and briskets, and enjoy excellent results. Also, soups and stews, the best budget-wise meals we know, are perfectly suited to crock pot cooking. If you consider your crock pot a "miniature oven", you're on your way to understanding why your crock pot will save money on your energy bill. Given that an oven commits about 2500 watts to a meal, while a crock pot only commits about 200 watts, you can see where you would save energy. Even if you consider that you'll be cooking a pot roast in a crock pot for twice as long as in the oven, you're still saving total energy used. Your oven would use 10 kWh to cook a 3 hour pot roast, while your crock pot would use 1.2 kWh to cook the same pot roast for 6 hours. Even roughly estimated, there's no denying the fact that your oven uses a whole lot more energy than your crock pot. When the evening rush is upon you, it's not the time to start panicking about dinner. If you've ever had to call the spouse to stop and pick up dinner somewhere, you know how much money that just cost you. Your family food budget cannot survive many of those last minute meal decisions. Instead, as you're driving the family around after work and school, stopping for piano lessons, shopping for some school event, or running any of those last minute errands, your crock pot can be working for you, cooking a great, hearty meal for the whole family to enjoy when you finally come in through the door. No call for take out, no more money wasted on instant meals! Save Both Time and Money With a Crock Pot - With a larger crock pot, say a 6 quart size, you can put together a big meal, cook it once, and plan to turn the leftovers into several more meals that will last the rest of the week. If you normally buy a lunch out every day, you can also save money by bringing your own home-cooked meal to work. Along with that, you can skip running around for lunch, saving your time for something more important. By cooking more than one meal in the same eight hour period of time, you are also saving energy. Cooking once and eating, two, three, or more times is a big way to save on both time and money. I think these reasons for cooking with a crock pot will convince most folks that it just makes sense. Using a crock pot does save time and money, yes, but above all it saves your sanity when you've got a busy family! That hectic "what's for dinner" cry when everyone finally comes through the door each night no longer has to overwhelm you - not when you've got dinner in the crock pot! About the Author: Learning the methods to use for slowcooker cooking will help save time and money, but it's the mouth-watering Slowcooker Recipes that will get you started! |