Even though there are lots of recipes available for slow cookers (AKA crock pots), there are approximately a gazillion more traditional recipes. This conversion chart turns just about any recipe into one for your slow cooker.
The reference chart comes from ever-useful One Good Thing by Jillee. As you can see, you’re basically just taking the baking/simmering time a conventional recipe calls for and translating it into a slow cooker time.
Jillee notes several important slow cooker conversion tips in her post too, like using less water in the crock pot, adding a half cup of water if the recipe doesn’t include liquid or sauce, and browning the meat before adding to the slow cooker.
Winter is an ideal time to pull out the slow cooker. Now you have a lot more dishes to cook with that convenient, low-effort appliance. Want more ideas? Check out the unexpected things you can make in a slow cooker.
Stovetop/Oven to Crockpot Conversion Chart [One Good Thing By Jillee]
Comments
3 responses to “Make Almost Any Recipe Work In A Slow Cooker With This Chart”
What a crock.
Browning meat before putting it in the slow cooker defeats the purpose of a one pot meal.
A crock pot isn’t just about one-pot cooking, it’s about slow and gentle cooking that doesn’t require attention – but good preparation is the difference between an ok meal and a really good one.
Meat put in a slow cooker won’t brown, but a quick trip in the frying pan will create a nice crust that adds extra flavour, particularly for larger things like a pot roast or osso bucco. If you don’t brown, there’s less washing up, but the meat will be less appealing and grey in colour.
Conversely, you can also translate many recipes to use a pressure cooker. Again, you need less liquid (the pot is sealed so it doesn’t evaporate) and the cooking time gets reduced to one third. So a curry that normally takes 30 minutes to simmer will be ready with just 10 minutes of pressure cooking! 😀
Both cooking techniques are worth mastering. If you’re out all day, a slow cooker will have dinner hot and ready to eat as soon as you get home. If you want some comfort food and it’s already 7pm on a Tuesday, the pressure cooker will have dinner ready in a fraction of the time.
Good slow cookers allow you to brown meat directly in the appliance using a specialised setting or to remove the slow cooker pot for use directly on the stove. Plus, as noted earlier, slow cooking is about more than just cooking without having to wash more pans