The kitchen is typically not a pleasant place to be when the temperature of the outside air rises. When it comes to preparing a delicious home-cooked meal, however, there are many options available to you that do not involve using a conventional stove top or oven to cook the food. Learn to use some of the equipment in your kitchen that produces less heat, such as the crock pot, to truly beat the summer heat and keep your cool while preparing a nice hot meal for friends and family. This will allow you to truly beat the heat.
And with that intro, let’s look at why should be cooking with a slow cooker in the Summer…
How exactly does cooking with a slow cooker help alleviate the effects of the heat? To put it another way, when cooking, a crock pot by itself emits a significantly lower amount of heat than an oven or stovetop would. The first and possibly most compelling reason to incorporate the use of a slow cooker into your summertime meal planning is the fact that doing so will save you time. You should also take into consideration the fact that by not using your stovetop or oven to heat the house, you are preventing your air conditioning system (or any other cooling methods) from working extra hard in order to compensate for the additional heat that is introduced by other methods of cooking. This is an important consideration to take into account.
The costs associated with operating a crock pot are significantly lower than those associated with operating a stove or oven. As a result, cooking with a crock pot can be considered a win-win situation. Stoves and ovens are typically the biggest energy wasters in a home, whether they are gas or electric. When you consider that you are not raising the temperature in your home through the use of conventional methods of cooking, you are using an even smaller amount of electricity.
Unfortunately for most people, the consensus has been that crock pots were designed for warm, hearty winter meals and comfort foods. If you can do so, the crock pot ought to be one of the cooking methods you adore the most and turn to the greatest number of times. When using a crock pot for cooking, you have endless options to choose from. The crock pot can be used to prepare almost any dish that can be baked, in addition to an incredible number of other delicious and tempting meals and treats as well.
The Advantages of Using a Slow Cooker
When it comes to cooking with a crock pot, many other benefits are well worth mentioning in addition to the benefits related to costs that were discussed earlier. To begin, the bulk of the work involved in cooking with a crock pot is done in the morning, when you are fresh, rather than at the end of the day, when you are likely to be exhausted from a busy day at work or play. Because of this, you will have a lower risk of forgetting an ingredient or making other mistakes, which are common occurrences when we are in a rush to prepare dinner after a long day of activities and are tired from those activities.
Second, many of the best recipes for the crock pot include vegetables, an excellent source of the nutrients our bodies require. When there is not much time left to prepare a meal, it is common practice to omit vegetables and other side dishes in favor of making things as easy as possible. Cooking with a crock pot typically only requires the preparation of a single dish.
The convenience of using a crock pot for summertime cooking extends to the process of cleaning up afterward, which is yet another compelling argument in its favor. Most meals prepared using a crock pot only require one dish, as opposed to using multiple pans. This ensures that there won’t be a mountain of dishes that need to be washed by hand or loaded into the dishwasher afterward (or, if you’re anything like me, both). You can reduce the amount of time you spend cleaning in the same way that you reduced the amount of time you spent slaving away over a hot stove. Oh, wait! That means you won’t have to spend any time slaving over a hot stove. After the cleanup is done, you can go back to enjoying the setting sun, playing with your children to try to catch lightning bugs, or gazing up at the night sky in anticipation of the first star.
Although there will never be a single cooking method superior to all others, crock pot cooking comes very close. If you have a crock pot that is gathering dust somewhere in the back of your pantry, now is the time to dig it out, give it a good dusting, and start looking for some delicious summertime recipes that call for crock pot cooking.