I agree cap that the crock pot doesn’t put forth the A quality meal but it sure is convenient. I don’t have a pressure cooker and even if I did my wife and son get home well before I do and I wouldn’t have the time to do up a nice roast, for example, for dinner on a regular weekday night. I just made a roast in the crock pot yesterday. Spent about 20 minutes in the morning seasoning and searing the roast, popped it in the crock pot with the necessary spices and veggies, and bam, when we walk in the door we have something resembling a home cooked meal. Otherwise, with our schedule it ends up being microwaved chicken nuggets and mixed vegetables.
Anyway, for dinner tonight: Roasted breaded porkchops
1 - 1/2 inch chops with the bone in
Take 2 slices of white bread and a shallot roughly chopped and throw them in the food processor
Add finely chopped Parmesan cheese and dried parsley along with a couple teaspoons of olive oil
Spread on a baking sheet and bake at 350 for maybe 4 minutes. Do not overbake.
Wash chops, pat dry, rub all over with sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Coat with dijon mustard as the wetting agent (don’t be shy, slather that stuff on there) and then coat with the prepared breadcrumbs. Back into the oven for about an hour at 350. Pure heaven. I’m very sated right now.
Back to this eh?
What about Italian Beef, chilli, pulled pork, corned beef and cabbage, oatmeal, and then there’s the stews.
You just can’t do everything in life “AG”.
OMG, you are not cooking your corn beef and cabbage in a crock pot are you?
Dude, you are going to hell.
J/k
Funny you bring up chili.
I can put all of the ingredients for chili, including dry beans that have not been soaked into the pressure cooker and a half hour later it is done. Dry beans man, the same beans you have to soak overnight and cook in the crock pot for six hours.
I love my pressure cooker!!!
They are not expensive if you shop around and once you use one there is no going without one ever again.
But comparing it to AG. I will one day brew AG. I just have to build my Brutus system then I can expedite my AG brewing so it will fit into my schedule. So like tygo said. If you dont have a pressure cooker and you dont have time before to cook then what choice do you have.
My only argument is there is a better way and it wont take a bite out of your time if you have the tools.
care to drop this process and recipe in the recipes forum? I have a pressure cooker - bought it this year to do some canning from the garden. But we consumed most of what grew except just 2 or 3 weeks when we passed on to others. It want a bumper year for us.
Anyway, I have only used it once - did a venison roast and way overdid it at 10pounds for an hour and 15 minutes. it was overcooked but very moist. A touch on the stringy side so I shredded it and froze for tamales … which I haven’t made yet.
I am totally green on the pressure cooker. would love to do some chili in it. can you post this recipe?
I will but am I gonna get railed for putting beans in it? Its yankee style.
I have quite a few recipes for what I call chili. I make a black bean chili where I use tamatillos instead of tomato.
I also make a mole chili using cocoa powder. Good stuff! I love beans.
Ill post some recipes in the chili thread.
Know whats great? a Carolina beef and black bean soup. Not chili but comes out great from the pressure cooker.
If you slow cook with those results you are doing something wrong. Slow cooking is very much like braising - your goal is to “melt” the connective tissue into the meat. If the meat is dried out you cooked it too hot.
That said, I often do a slow cooker meal because I can bring the kids to Tae Kwon Do, get home and have a meal ready to eat. I am the main cook in the house. No one EVER complains about Roast Beef. Know that.
Oh man, I am all about brazing!!! I love braised short ribs and osso buko.
Braising is an art, a skill, a balance of temperature and time (a ballet) that is adjusted to accommodate the size and type of meat. I doubt you are going to achieve that in a crock pot. I dont know, maybe I am wrong?
If I was able to get a good finished product out of the crock pot I still wouldn’t use it. Cant seem to justify using $7.35 in electric to cook a $3.00 piece of meat. Especially when I can get far superior results in a pressure cooker using about $.35 worth of electric.
The way I see it there are two kinds of people in the world. The ones that use a crock pot and the ones that would not use a crock pot. The ones that use crock pots are the enemy. They are going to slow cook the earth until there is nothing left.
People that use crock pots are the same people that have an old rusting mustang on cinder blocks in the front yard. They sit on their sofa that is on the front porch and talk about how they been workin on the Mustang for the last 17 years. ;D
You guys know Im kidding right?
Lets face it, debating is fun, and how many culinary and brewing things are debatable?
It’s a Trans Am if you care! And we sit on the backseat of it that’s been removed and sittin on the porch that I swear I’m gonna put back in next month after I get 'er fixed up right!
Oh, you’re way off this time. I think I can cook the whole cow for 7.35 in electric. And the car in my yard keeps it out of the landfill, provides cover in case of a gun fight, cuts down on greenhouse gasses cuz I have that much less to mow, and when the trunk is full of cans I know I’ve got about $10.35 coming to me from the recyling center. $3 for the meat and the rest for the electric.
And I can’t believe you cook on electric! I’d be converting that right away - no control over the heat. Gas is instantaneous - I’d never serve food to anyone else that was cooked on electric due to lack of overall control and an iffy final product. Some of the worst food I’ve ever had was off an electric stove.
I do cook on electric and it almost kept me from buying this house. There is no gas in this hood.
But Ill tell ya true, I changed my mind. I got one of those porcelain top electric stoves. I think it is a Profile. Awe man is it great. It does get hot right away as gas does, and I have more control and more evenly distributed heat on the pan. Only draw back is the heat doesn’t go right down, stays hot for a while. You have to remove the pan from the burner. No big deal.
But no crap, much better than a gas burner. In fact they make these stoves with gas. I think it is a burner under the porcelain and it conducts the heat the same way. Clean up is a snap too, it is a sealed surface.
I bought and used a porcelain stove in my old house and it really was a great stove. No where near as good as the gas stove I have here though. You’re lying to yourself if you really believe that porcelain is better (or even just as good) as gas. ;)
I have worked with “high end” gas stoves. I have worked as a line cook on commercial gas stoves. I have used several kinds of gas stoves.
My electric burners are as good as gas, better cause there isnt a ring of concentrated heat. It is heated evenly across the whole surface of the pan. I have the extra large burner and the bridge burner. The only thing that bothers me a little is I have to remove the pan from the burner if I want the heat to stop immediate.
A regular residential gas burner does not even come close.
I prefer a gas cooktop because it is easier to control, IME. Plus, there are techniques that one can achieve with gas that simply aren’t possible with electric. E.g., roasting peppers over the open flame, finishing omelettes by tilting the pan over the flame after you’ve folded the omelette (a technique Julia mentions in Mastering the Art, as I recall). Also, I suppose it depends on what type of gas cooktop you’re using, but gas can heat just as evenly as electric if you’ve got a burner that has both an inner and outer ring. I’ve never owned my own cooktop since I don’t own my own place, but when I do buy my first house, it will have a gas cooktop.
Its yankee style.