3 Foods You Should Absolutely Prepare in a Slow Cooker

If you’ve been following along at home, you’ll know that we recently shared a piece about the foods you should not prepare in a slow cooker. While that’s useful information to have on hand, it doesn’t exactly help you build confidence around what you should be cooking in this nifty little kitchen appliance.

For that reason, we thought we’d pull together a list of some of the best foods to pop into your slow cooker at home. Here are some of our favourites.

3 of the best foods to prepare in the slow cooker

This list details some of the foods that respond best to this kind of cooking treatment. If you would like a list of corresponding recipes as well, let us know in the comments section below!

Tough or cheap cuts of meat

Per the Betty Crocker website, examples like short ribs, pork shoulder, ham and brisket do well when left to cook low and slow for extended periods of time. For that reason, these types of meat love time spent in a slow cooker.

Hearty vegetables

As we touched on in our earlier piece, delicate veggies like asparagus or tomatoes don’t usually respond well to slow cookers. On the other hand, hearty vegetables like potatoes or pumpkin or sweet potatoes are perfect for this kind of cooking.

Soups and stews

Again turning to the advice of Betty Crocker, stews and soups are a great way to put your slow cooker to good use as the environment encourages flavour development and won’t risk moisture loss. Sure, this may not be a food, per se, but stews and soups are both types of food that work well in this kind of setting, so we thought they should make the list.

This Reddit thread is filled with examples of recipes folks love to make in the slow cooker, and chili con carne (i.e. a type of stew) is one of the most popular dishes on the list.

Do you have any recommendations for foods that can easily be tossed into a slow cooker? Pop them in the comments below! And if you’d like to see any specific recipes shared on-site, make a request, and we’ll do our best to get it sorted for you.