The 5 Benefits of buying a slow cooker

I’ve got a confession to make, I love a kitchen gadget, ironic, being that my wife does most of the cooking in our house.

As good of an idea they might seem to be at the time, unfortunately, most will be shoved in the cupboard only to be forgotten about gathering dust until I find a use for it.

Buying a slow cooker was one of those times, we bought it on a whim one winter’s day thinking how nice it would be to have something warming in our bellies.

After doing my research we ended up getting a Morphy Richards Sear and Stew. We bought it and our lives were going to be transformed, sadly they weren’t.  We found it a lovely little corner in our kitchen and rolled it out once in a while when we fancied a sausage casserole.

More recently, having taken a drop in our household income, we have found that we have used it a lot more and have been a bit more adventurous with it too, well for us anyway, spicy curries, chilli con carne and my wife’s own concoction (the less said the better)

1. Saves you money

Unless you have money to burn, I assume you’re not going to be putting in meat from Marks and Spencer or Waitrose in a slow cooker.  Cheap cuts do the job just fine and there’s nothing wrong with frozen veg either.

You can also get away with bulking up the meal with potatoes and pulses.

You could probably do the same dishes in a conventional oven, but slow cookers are cheaper to run, comparable to leaving a lightbulb on all day apparently, not that I ever would.

2. Leftovers

Leftovers in our house were once an alien concept, why the hell would you cook more than you need, and if we did I’d just stick it on my plate and ate it anyway.  How I had room for a pudding is beyond me.

In our recent cold weather snap having a leftover chilli or stew at work has been fantastic, and everyone knows that food tastes better the next day.  The only disadvantage that I’ve found, is that after having something so heavy I could just do with getting my head down for a quick 30-minute snooze, no such luck, I don’t work for a silicon valley tech company with sleep pods.

3. Saves on washing up

The Morphy Richards Sear and Stew really is a great bit of kit, it’s really one-pot cooking at it’s best, no need for an extra pan to sear the meat, stick in the ingredients, turn it on and wait for eating what could be easier. Best of all it’s dishwasher safe so if we are really in a mood where we can’t be bothered to lift a finger, into the dishwasher it goes.

4. Frees up your time

Time is precious and when I’ve been at work all day, as strange as it might seem to some people, I actually enjoy spending time with my wife.  Yes, we could cook together and on the weekends we often do.

There is only two of us, but there can’t be any doubt that they are fantastic for families too, especially those that seem to be on the go non-stop.

5. Versatility

Can you believe it, you can actually do more than making a sausage casserole in the slow cooker.  What a revelation.

Don’t get me wrong we had cookbook after cookbook about on what we could actually make, but these were read when we first got them, well we looked at the pictures and then like our the gadgets before them forgotten about.

Slow cookers lend themselves well to experimentation too, throw in your ingredients leave it and fingers crossed, in a few hours time you’ll have an enjoyable meal.

Do you use a slow cooker?

If you do, what’s your favourite recipe and what are the benefits you’ve found in using it? If you don’t, what’s stopping you?