Simmer Dinner

By Kathy Stephenson
The Salt Lake Tribune

Families living in Brigham Young University's married-student housing have been bit by the slow-cooker virus, experiencing repeated outbreaks of home-cooked meals and stress-free evenings.

Blame Utahns Stephanie Ashcraft and Janet Eyring -- authors of the new book 101 Things to Do With A Slow Cooker (Gibbs Smith, $9.95).
Ashcraft, whose first book 101 Things To Do With a Cake Mix (Gibbs Smith, $9.95) hit the The New York Times best-seller list last year, lives in the Provo housing complex with her doctoral-student husband and their three children.

When Ashcraft's neighbors learned she lived nearby, they dug through storage boxes and cupboards for their once-neglected wedding gifts. Soon, like millions of others who have rediscovered the convenience of slow cookers, the students were fixing dinners of shepherd's pie, ham and potato casserole and roasted briskets.

"It's become epidemic," admitted Ashcraft, 30, who owns six slow cookers. Eyring, a Heber City resident and cooking instructor, owns 11.

Now, Ashcraft said, when the clock strikes 5 p.m., instead of being stressed about what to make for dinner, "a lot of moms will still be out playing with their kids because we all have our slow cookers turned on."

One BYU neighbor hit especially hard by the slow-cooker affliction is Sally Cannon, who hardly ever used her 7-year-old appliance until this fall.
"Now I use it five times a week," said Cannon, who is pregnant with her fourth child. Cannon said by 4 p.m. she loses energy and motivation to cook. With the slow cooker, she spends a few minutes in the morning combining ingredients so when dinner time comes around, all she has to do is set the table.

"The meals are simple, inexpensive and my family loves it," said Cannon.

The Rival Appliance Company introduced its slow cooker in 1971 under the trademark name "Crock-Pot." Since then more than 80 million of the appliances have been sold.

The slow cooker has evolved over the years from a single unit that was often difficult to clean to an appliance with removable ceramic liners and modern colors. Earlier this year, Rival introduced a Crock-Pot that has more than 200 pre-programmed recipes stored inside an electronic display screen.

For those who are unfamiliar with the appliance, a slow cooker allows food to cook for several hours at a very low wattage. The slow simmering creates flavorful soups and stews and makes inexpensive cuts of meat moist and tender. Most slow cookers have at least two settings: low, which cooks food at about 200 degrees and high, which heats at about 300 degrees.

Using a slow cooker requires almost no clock watching and recipes can be prepared early in the day; cooks can forget about it until ready to eat. However, health experts say that because the cooker can take several hours to heat, large pieces of meat should be cooked on high for at least the first hour and then low to prevent bacteria from growing. Browning meats also can quicken the heating process and kill surface bacteria.

Ashcraft said the newfound popularity of the slow cooker can be attributed to busy families with the desire to spend quality time together. This is why Ashcraft and Eyring came up with the "throw and go" method of slow cooking. The recipes in their book allow cooks to combine ingredients in 10 minutes or less.

"You open a can of this and a bottle of that and stir it together right in the slow cooker," said Ashcraft, who even includes a few cake-mix recipes in the cookbook.

In its first two months, 101 Things To Do With A Slow Cooker has sold 80,000 copies, outpacing sales of Ashcraft's cake-mix book, said Alison Einerson, marketing director at Gibbs Smith. The book is available in all major bookstores, culinary specialty shops and on the Internet.
Ashcraft and Eyring are already planning a sequel that will come out next fall.

Lynn Alley takes a more involved approach to slow cooking in her new cookbook, The Gourmet Slow Cooker, Simple and Sophisticated Meals from Around the World (Ten Speed Press, $18.95).

"My goal with these recipes was to present fresh ideas a cut above the kind of food usually associated with slow cookers," Alley wrote in the book's introduction." I wanted to try a more gourmet approach, for people who appreciate simple meals, but don't want to sacrifice flavor and complexity."
Alley took some of her favorite ethnic recipes -- from pork stew in tomatillo sauce to Swiss steak -- and adapted them to the slow cooker.

The California freelance writer and cooking instructor said one-pot meals have been part of world cuisines for thousands of years. She gives a history and her own modern recipe, for example, for The Midas Feast, a one-pot meal that was supposedly served at the funeral of the legendary King Midas around 800 B.C.

kathys@sltrib.com