Sorry, I will never understand how great crock pots are.
All you’re doing is displacing the prep time. I’d rather prep things late in the day than first thing in the morning.
Cooking other things on the side? That’s part of the entire prep! How is that helping?
Nevermind the idea everything is like a mushy casserole since you put it all in one bucket. That’s not the desire every time!
I took a few packages of cubes, put them in the crock pot at 7am, put the crock on 8 hours of low heat cooking, and when I got home at 7pm I had the most awesome cube meal ever.
As I said elsewhere, I'm a guy. Give me meat, maybe salt or ketchup, and a head of lettuce and peppers and I'm a happy camper. Mrs DoodleBob is more refined.
Crockpots are great for pulled pork, chili and soups.
...how great crock pots are...
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They are great for things like shredded beef where (in my recipe) the cooking liquid is essential for my beef-barley-veggie soup. Only one pot to clean up, less energy and no need to check for reduction.
Another great tool is the vacuum pot. Make chili, soup, pasta sauce and instead of 2-6 hours to cook without reduction, eliminate some liquid and let it cook by its own heat in the vacuum (thermal) pot. Also can go along for a potluck, camping, or other road trip.
“Sorry, I will never understand how great crock pots are.”
Out of all the appliances in your kitchen, a crock pot uses the LEAST amount of electricity to cook a meal.
About 2-cents (maybe 4 now, thanks to Brandon!) worth of electricity for an all-day simmer.
I like that. Also, plenty of things don’t turn to mush if you’re not over-cooking them. It saved my bacon when I had 6 to feed 3x a day, PLUS I worked full-time.