Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook

You probably own a slow cooker - 80 percent of American households do. For more than thirty years, its unbeatable convenience and practicality have made it a staple of busy families, enabling anyone to return to a home-cooked meal at the end of a hectic day. Many slow cooker recipes, however, have relied on less-than-healthy convenience products. Now, Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann's Not Your Mother'sr Slow Cooker Cookbook takes a completely fresh look at cooking with this popular appliance. This comprehensive collection of 350 recipes combines the ease of slow cooking with the fresh, wholesome ingredients and exciting flavors of today's kitchen. For days when there's just no time for prep, there's Orange and Honey Chicken Drumsticks or Country Ribs with Onions, Apples, and Sauerkraut. For (slightly!) less hectic days there's Tangy Tomato Brisket or Lentil and Red Pepper Soup. Stay out of the kitchen when guests arrive with Duck Breasts with Port Wine Sauce or wake up to breakfast with Hot Apple Granola Oatmeal. Hensperger and Kaufmann offer dishes for every time frame, without compromising on taste, quality, or variety. And Not Your Mother'sr Slow Cooker Cookbook showcases the best of home cooking while taking advantage of a global melting pot of flavors - so cooks can serve Chicken and Shrimp Jambalaya one day and Japanese Beef Curry Rice another. All the classic slow cooker recipes are here, plus many more adventuresome and innovative dishes. There is also practical information on the different types of slow cookers, their latest accessories, and what sizes are best for what purposes. According to the authors, 80% of American households own a slow cooker. This whopping collection of 350 recipes is reason enough to unearth that Crock-Pot from the attic or invest in one of the new high-tech models. The title, however, is a misnomer, and not just because the book includes a recipe for "Mom's Beef Stew." Much of what Hensperger (The Bread Bible) and Kaufmann (coauthor, with Hensperger, of The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook) present is exactly the kind of comfort food typically associated with childhood snow days or family gatherings. To use the word "hearty" in describing these recipes is to state the obvious. There are more than a dozen oatmeals and porridges, ranging from Cinnamon Apple Oatmeal to Creamy Cornmeal Porridge. Soups include Vegetarian Split Pea, French Onion, and White Bean with Bacon. Twenty-four types of baked beans are mere prelude for the 14 chili options, including "Senator Barry Goldwater's Arizona Chili" (which gives new meaning to the phrase "bowl of red"). Other recipes are for poultry, meat and fish dishes, and New and Old World dishes are plentiful. The only letdown is the "Not-from-the-Slow Cooker Accompaniments" chapter, with its uninspired choices like Baked Rice, and Mixed Green Salad. But the concluding pages, full of puddings and fruit desserts, atone with sinful treats like Chocolate Peanut Butter Pudding Cake and Rum-Butterscotch Bananas. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. - Publishers Weekly. Although it's true that recipes like Frijoles Charros or Moroccan Chicken Thighs with Cumin wouldn't have appeared in "your mother's" slow cooker cookbook, many of the other dishes included here-e.g., U.S. Senate Bean Soup and Sloppy Joes-certainly could have. Hensperger and Kaufmann (The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook) provide lots of tips and ideas for getting the most out of another of their favorite kitchen appliances. But while the slow cooker works well for stews, braises, chutneys, and steamed puddings, some of the recipes are a bit of a stretch. Take Caramel Apples, which uses the cooker (and one to two hours' time) to melt store-bought caramels with water for the apple coating. For collections where other slow-cooker books are popular. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. - Library Journal