Slow Cooking 101 – “Then & Now”

In September of 2017, I wrote the post below to help explain my love of the slow cooker and help our readers get started on their slow cooking journey. As we celebrate FMI’s Family Meal Month I thought it would be fun to “re-post” with a little glimpse into how my journey unfolded…

You can see by a picture of my 3 children taken 17 years ago that I didn’t have a lot of Zen in my life. Today, they are all beautiful young adults carving out their own futures and I can honestly say those years around the kitchen table helped provide a strong foundation for their growth.

As I wrote my post, I was reminded of those years when I was talking to my darling niece, Julie. She is the owner of a Barre3 studio in Bethesda, Maryland and constantly finds herself jugging the demands of raising 2 young boys while managing the demands of a small business owner.

Julie is a phenomenal cook.  An environmentalist from an early age, she was “way into” healthy eating before it was in vogue. She is comfortable selecting produce at her local Farmers’ Market in the morning and putting it together later in the day for a delicious “last minute” meal, so using a slow cooker for the first time was an experience that did not easily fit the pattern she was used to.

But now that she has two young boys who are very active she realizes that those days at the Farmers’ Market and last minute meals are at an end.

Her first attempt at slow cooking was to follow our well known Coq au Vin recipe adapted from Julia Child’s classic cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

Over the phone one evening we had a good chuckle, as she described how during the preparation and cooking of her Coq au Vin she learned that slow cooking required more time than she had anticipated. She sautéed her meat and put everything into her slow cooker and turned it to high for 2 hours because dinnertime was getting close. When she opened the lid she wondered whether, having cooked a dish with cognac and wine, her boys were too young to eat the dinner!

After we finished our conversation my thoughts went back to my days as a young mom. At first we ate a lot of simple food – pasta, eggs, really anything that I could do quickly as my hands were full. It wasn’t until I faced the additional challenges of homework and after school car pools that those days of quick, last minute meal preparation were finite and I ventured into the world of slow cooking. It took me at least one year of regular slow cooking to understand how to create space both physically and mentally in my kitchen for a slow cooker.

So I’ve put together a tutorial for anyone who is eager to get started.

Step 1

Choosing your Slow Cooker or the brand new Multi-cooker (Instant Pot)

Take a few moments to check out our tab on Getting Started It gives you guidelines in terms of features and budget.  Pick the one that makes sense for you.  If you like the idea of having an appliance that you can cook over a long period or in minutes then we suggest you purchase a Multi-Cooker i.e. an Instant Pot.

Step 2

Getting Organized

Slow cooking is not a spontaneous way to cook. You can’t pull a few things out of the fridge at 5 and have them ready in an hour. It requires advance preparation. Of course, shifting meal preparation out of the busy late afternoon period is exactly what a busy Mom wants, so this is a good thing, but it takes some time and thought to adapt to the change.  (Although with the new Multi-Cooker (Instant Pot) you can make our Coq au Vin in 12 minutes versus slow cooked for 7 hours – so times have changed!)

When my children were in Elementary/Middle School I would set aside 1 hour on a Sunday afternoon to plan my meals for the week. I would literally sit in the grocery store parking lot (one of the few places in my life where I could get some peace) with a couple of cookbooks, pen and paper to map out the week.

When I returned from the grocery store I would separate all of my slow cooking products, label them and put them in the fridge. It’s not that I’m super organized it’s just that during those days I was so fragmented between 3 different schools that I wanted to make the afternoons as relaxing as possible, and being more organized actually created a much more relaxed feeling in our home.  

Monday, Tuesday and Thursday were all nights that I prepared slow cooked dinners. I would alternate proteins (beef, chicken, pork, seafood, grains) and my cooking times would vary depending on my activities. If I had meetings all day I would prep something that could utilize the full days cooking time (beef, chicken, lamb, pork) and put my dinner on to cook before I left in the morning.  If I had the afternoon free I could make something that required a shorter cooking time (fish or a vegetarian meal) and pop it in around 2 pm on high.  Again, using an multi-cooker can give you much more flexibility in your day.

Step 3

Make it a Meal

I always added fresh sides to my slow cooker dinners – a salad, rice/couscous, steamed vegetables.

Step 4

Stocking Your Pantry 

Once you get the hang of slow cooking you can be a little more creative and inventive. If you go to our Getting Started section and click “Tips for success section you can figure out what sort of ingredients you need to have on hand. I have been slow cooking for so many years that if I have some beans, chicken or beef in the freezer and a few key spices I can always throw together a soup or stew.

We share our seasonal recipes for the slow cooker all year round however September, particularly here in Chicago, is always a good time to start slow cooking. We hope you can join us this month through our Slow Cooking 101 series.

Author’s Note

Join us this month as we want to celebrate Family Meal Month by gifting you a little Zen!  We are offering our Zen Sampler pack for $10 (plus shipping)!  So stock up and save, gift a friend or a favorite teacher/sister/mother or yourself!  Jane will be planning a month of meal-time hacks to help you get the school year started.

 Cook’s Note

The pressure cooker version removes more alcohol than it’s predecessor in the slow cooker. Better for feeding those younger hungry mouths! – Jane McKay

Zen Moment

“The shared meal is no small thing. It is a foundation of family life, the place where our children learn the art of conversation and acquire the habits of civilization: sharing, listening, taking turns, navigating differences, arguing without offending. ”

-Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation