Is It Time For You To Start Cooking With A Crock Pot?

Is there really any truth to the assumption that cooking with a crock pot, or slow cooker, saves you both money and time? How exactly can a crock pot do this?

Save Time With a Crock Pot – If your meal is going to be in the slow cooker for 8 hours or so, doesn’t saving time seem like an oxymoron? The time savings comes in a few ways, but certainly being able to walk out of your kitchen while your meal is cooking does save you some time to do other things.

Assuming that one person can take on the job of “chief cook and bottle washer” is simply not a reality in today’s family. No hot burners or open flames mean that you can safely ask your youngsters to help out in the kitchen, adding ingredients to the crock pot, washing vegetables, and the like. Time you and you alone would have spent preparing your meal is no longer necessary. Because everyone can help, you are now free to take care of something else!

Standing over a stove, watching a pot boil, is certainly time wasted. We all know what it’s like to monitor some soup or stew as it simmers on top of the stove, constantly checking its progress. Putting that same soup together in a crock pot, then walking away, frees up hours and hours of your time – time in which you can accomplish another task!

You’re on your way home after a hard day of work and errands, and realize that there is nothing in the house for dinner. A quick stop at the grocery store is now on your agenda, and, of course, there is no such thing as a quick stop at the grocery store. Half an hour later, you emerge with food you didn’t want, too many prepared dishes that cost way too much, but you don’t have time to fix anything else. That stop just cost you an awful lot of precious time. By planning your crock pot meals ahead and shopping at a scheduled time, you could avoid those hasty stops at the grocery store, or worse, the convenience store. That time spent could be put to much better use, like sitting and enjoying your family at dinnertime!

Save Money With a Crock Pot – You’ve got to cook dinner anyway, so how can cooking in a crock pot save money? Food is food – it all costs the same, right? But, there are a couple ways that you can save money both in the grocery store and on your energy bill when you use a crock pot.

You can now walk into your grocery store’s meat department and skip right past the expensive cuts of meat. A crock pot’s magic is best illustrated in turning cheaper cuts of meat into tender, fall apart with a fork, meals. Budget cuts of meat contain sinew and more connective tissue, which can be tough if not cooked properly. A crock pot is the perfect environment for these budget cuts. Cooked slowly, on a low temperature, in a moisture rich pot, breaks down this tough tissue and turns even the toughest cut into a tender, succulent morsel. You can now buy pork shoulder, rump roasts, and briskets, and enjoy excellent results. Also, soups and stews, the best budget-wise meals we know, are perfectly suited to crock pot cooking.

Even though you would cook a pot roast in the oven for half as long as you would cook it in a crock pot, the oven uses a lot more energy. Your oven uses 2500 watts, while a crock pot is normally rated at about 200 watts. That means that a 3 hour pot roast in the oven uses 10 kWh, while a 6 hour pot roast in the crock pot uses about 1.2 kWh. These are estimates, of course, but you must admit that even the most efficient full-sized oven can’t compete with a crock pot when it comes to energy savings. A crock pot can be considered a miniature oven just to get an idea of how and why it would save you money spent on your energy bill.

When the evening rush is upon you, it’s not the time to start panicking about dinner. If you’ve ever had to call the spouse to stop and pick up dinner somewhere, you know how much money that just cost you. Your family food budget cannot survive many of those last minute meal decisions. Instead, as you’re driving the family around after work and school, stopping for piano lessons, shopping for some school event, or running any of those last minute errands, your crock pot can be working for you, cooking a great, hearty meal for the whole family to enjoy when you finally come in through the door. No call for take out, no more money wasted on instant meals!

Save Both Time and Money With a Crock Pot – Cooking two or three meals at a time in a big crock pot is definitely a time and money saver. Preparing once and eating twice saves time in the kitchen, and having leftovers for other meals or for lunches saves money. Also, having your crock pot cooking for 8 hours and preparing two meals during that time saves on your energy usage. Time spent running around at lunch hour buying a lunch can now be spent on something more productive, not to mention the money saved by not buying your lunch out. How would you like to cook on Monday and not have to think about what to make the rest of the week?

These arguments for cooking with a crock pot to save both time and money should be sufficient to convince most folks. If that’s not enough, consider your sanity. You have a busy family and when everyone is hollering about what’s for dinner, you can finally relax and say “look in the crock pot!

Get your family hooked on slowcooker cooking with some delicious new slowcooker recipes that are sure to please!