Slow cookers and crock pots have always been popular in our family, but for some reason ours had kind of fallen by the wayside for a while. When I dug it up recently, I realized that some of the Rival crock pot parts that were supposed to be packed away with the unit were not there; namely the lid. Have you ever tried to cook with a slow cooker without the proper fitting lid? I can tell you that it doesn't work well at all. After realizing this, (and after an in-depth search of many, many boxes in the garage), I finally had to admit that the original lid was somehow now gone for good. Fortunately though, I found that with a quick internet search, I was able to find replacement Rival crock pot parts that got me back in action in no time. Here are some of my favorite aspects of cooking with my Rival crockpot.
I would say there are two main reasons that I was, and have become again, such a huge fan of crock pot cooking. Those reasons are cost and convenience. You see, like so many people in the world today, my family has taken a rather significant hit to our finances over the past few years. On top of that, not only do we have less money now, but it seems like we continue to have less and less time each year. Getting home late from a stressful job, the stress compounded by the fact that we know we're still not bringing home the kind of money we really need to be bringing home, and now we have almost no time to prepare a good, healthy dinner. Going out to eat is a rare occasion anymore, so we had to figure out a solution.
This is where it suddenly dawned on me that our Rival slow cooker could be pulled out of retirement and come to our rescue. (By the way, in case you're not aware and are getting confused, the terms "slow cooker" and "crock pot" refer to the same piece of cookware, we just use both terms interchangeably). You see, with a slow cooker we can do some simple preparations in the morning such as adding some vegetables, liquid (usually water, wine, broth or some combination of those), and some meat and spices to the crock pot, turn it on low, and leave for the day. By the time we get home we are welcomed by the smell of good, old fashioned home cooking and have a hot meal ready and waiting for us. It's as if little, magical kitchen elves have been slaving away just for us all day. It's awesome!
Not only is this kind of cooking a great time saver, but it is also economical too. Because of the slow cooking nature of this method of preparing meat, it gets incredibly tender over time. What this means is that meat that you might otherwise be dis-inclined to purchase because of its tendency towards being tough can work very well in a crock pot. And guess what? Those kinds of cuts of meat tend to be quite a bit cheaper in price than the naturally more tender cuts. But in the end, these will be just as tender as you can imagine.
Finally, the other great thing is that it is very easy to make 'extra' servings of your meal. For us, that means lunch the next day. Again, economical and much healthier than the restaurant food we used to eat on a regular basis back in 'the salad days'.
It was great to rediscover all these benefits of slow cooking recently, and if you're not yet part of the crock pot fan club, you really should consider giving it a shot. What's more is that buying an actual crock pot is NOT a big investment. In fact, if you take a quick look over at Amazon.com you will see a whole bevy of different crock pots and slow cookers for sale. While you could spend upwards of $100 on something like the Cuisinart PSC-400 4 Quart Programmable Slow Cooker, there are many quality cookers in the $40 range (such as the Crockpot SCR500 5-Quart Slow Cooker
