Cookbooks, we all have them, I seem to have an abundance of them. This picture is only half of the shelf and I have lots more squirreled around the house. So I thought I might try to whittle them down by actually trying the recipes inside. Of course one recipe isn't going to determine the fate of the entire book but I have to start somewhere. I hope for the next year to be able to offer you some insight into these books so you can decide if it is right for you. And also some tips and hints that I use, along with my mess ups.
For Christmas my fabulous sister gave me Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever and I dove right into this one. With two small girls crock pot meals are a god send.
The first recipe I tried was
My husband and I gave it 4 stars
Stinkabeth (4 yrs old) gave it 3
and Kudzo (7 yrs old) 1 (but she doesn't like tomatoes)
Ease:
This was not a throw it in the crock pot and hit go. There was a lot of prep work (you can see some in the image above) but it was well worth it. The filling had to be made, the meat had to be cut, then assembled and lastly seared. Then the veggies and spices needed sautéing. After all that was done it finally went into the crock pot.
Outcome:
Some of my rolls fell apart and they were very difficult to get out of my crock pot so presentation was a complete failure.
The recipe says it makes 8 servings. For us it made more than that, we ate it for an entire week!
Notes:
I doubled the nutmeg for two reasons. 1. We tend to like more flavorful dishes 2. My nutmeg was old. The extra nutmeg did not over power the dish.
What a great idea. I only really use my cookbooks that have the stuff I bake in them. You can tell they've been used and that I refer to them a lot by all of my marginalia. I really need to start doing this with cooking and not just baking. Then, I get home from work and I just don't feel like it. But, that's another issue entirely!
ReplyDeleteHi there - thanks for leaving a comment on Comptonia :)
ReplyDeleteI'm finding your cooking and recipe posts very interesting! You are much more ambitious than me, as I consider three ingredients to be "cooking"! Your meals must be lovely.