Slow Cooker Recipes

Patricia A. Myers is a historian at the Historic Sites and Archives
Service, Alberta Community Development, and the author of Sky Riders: An
Illustrated History of Aviation in Alberta, 1906–1945.

Slow cookers have fallen out of favor recently, and Jean Paré wants to
change that. She knows the advantages of slow cooking: it doesn’t heat
up the kitchen; it won’t dry out food; you can serve right from the
cooker; and dinner can be cooking while you’re out of the house. Slow
cookers, she reminds the reader, need no minding.

The range of recipes included in this book is impressive. You would
expect to find soups, stews, and pot roasts, but not necessarily
appetizers such as sweet and sour wings and many kinds of cakes and
desserts. There’s a good selection of meat, vegetable, and pasta
dishes too. The recipes come with nutritional analysis, and the option
of cooking on a high or low setting. There’s quite a reliance on
packaged ingredients, though, from canned soups and cake mixes to liquid
gravy browner and tomato paste. Many of these products are very high in
sodium.

Slow Cooker Recipes has a 1950s feel to it, and the recipes seem
slightly old-fashioned. For example, Rice Pork Chops uses pork chops,
gravy browner, and a can of condensed chicken and rice soup; Cherry Pork
Chops uses a can of cherry pie filling. Many of the homilies (e.g.,
“If you’ve been growling all day, you will be dog tired at night”)
and groaners (e.g., “If you have a doorbell and a baseball player, you
have a dingbat”) sprinkled throughout have a Doris Day feel to them.
Nevertheless, if you’re a fan of slow cooking, or want to become one,
this book is for you.