300 Low-Carb Slow Cooker Recipes (2 page)

• It's never a bad idea to spray your slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray before putting the food in it. I don't always do this, though I've specified it where it seems a particularly good idea. But I can't think of a situation in which it would hurt.

• Several books wanted me to use only whole spices, such as whole peppercorns or coarse-cracked pepper, whole cloves, whole leaf herbs, etc., etc. I used what I had on hand. I got tasty food.

• A few books felt that you shouldn't season your slow cooker food until the end of cooking time. I do often suggest that you add salt and pepper to taste at the end of the cooking time, but other than that, our seasonings go into the pot with the food. I've never had a problem with this.

• Some books were emphatic about the size of the slow cooker. This matters some; you can't put 4 quarts (3.8 L) of soup in a 3-quart (2.8 L) slow cooker, and if you're only making a small batch of dip, you probably shouldn't use a 5 1/2-quart (5 L) pot. But some cookbooks predicted dire results if I didn't fill my slow cooker at least halfway. I often filled my big slow cooker less than halfway. I got tasty food.

The biggest reason for the popularity of slow cookers is what I call “time-shifting”—the fact that they allow you to cook dinner at some time other than right before you eat it, so you can eat soon after you get home from work. Because of this, many slow cooker books tell you to cook most of their recipes for 8 hours or more. They figure you'll be away that long.

Unfortunately, I find that many dishes get unbearably mushy and overdone if they cook that long. I've tried to give the cooking times that I feel give the best results, which may not be the time that fits with your workday. These can generally be extended by an hour without a problem, but extending them by 2, 3, or more hours may well give you a very different result than I got.

A better idea is to do all your prep work the night before—cooking dinner after dinner, as it were. Then lift the filled crockery insert out of the base and stash it in the fridge overnight. The next morning, pull it out of the fridge, put it in the base, and turn it on, just before you leave the house. Starting with chilled food will add 1 to 2 hours to your cooking time. If you do this, don't heat up the base before putting the chilled crockery insert in! You may well crack the crockery.

If you need to extend your time even further, consider getting a timer. You should be fine letting your food wait 2 hours before the timer turns on the slow cooker—3 if the food is straight out of the fridge when the crockery goes in the base. It's a better idea to delay the starting time than to turn the pot off early because retained heat will cause the food to continue cooking even after the pot is turned off. Ask the nice people at your local hardware store about a
timer you can plug things into. If you're just now acquiring your slow cooker, there are units available with time-delayed starters built in.

On the other hand, if you want to speed up a slow cooker recipe, you can do so by getting the contents warm before putting the crockery insert in the base. The crocks for two of my three slow cookers fit in my microwave. I have, on occasion, microwaved the full crock on medium heat until it was warm through before putting the crock in the base to continue cooking. This cuts a good hour off the cooking time.

You can, of course, also use the high setting when the low setting is specified. This will cut the cooking time roughly in half. However, I find that for most recipes low yields better results. If you have the time to use it when it's recommended, I suggest you do so.

If you're going to be around for a while and leave the house later, you could cook on high for an hour or so and then switch to low when you leave. Figure, again, that each hour on high is worth 2 hours on low.

The size of your slow cooker relative to your recipe will somewhat affect the cooking time. If you have a 5 1/2-quart (5 L) slow cooker and the food only fills it 1/4 full, you can likely subtract 1 hour from the cooking time. Conversely, if the food fills your slow cooker to within an inch of the rim, you can add an hour.

Here are a few ingredients I thought needed a little explanation:

•
Beer
—One or two recipes in this book call for beer. The lowest carbohydrate beer on the market is Michelob Ultra, but I don't much like it. Still, it should be okay for cooking. Miller Lite and Milwaukee's Best Light are better, and they have only about 0.5 grams more carb per can.

•
Black soybeans
—Most beans and other legumes are too high in carbohydrates for many low-carb dieters, but there is one exception. Black soybeans have a very low usable carb count, about 1 gram per serving, because most of the carbs in them are fiber. Several recipes in this book call for Eden brand canned black soybeans. Many health food stores carry these. If yours doesn't, I'll bet they could special order them for you. Health food stores tend to be wonderful about special orders.

I wouldn't recommend eating soybean recipes several times a week. I know that soy has a reputation for being the Wonder Health Food of All Existence, but there are reasons to be cautious. For decades now, soy has been known to be hard on the thyroid, and if you're trying to lose weight and improve your health, a slow thyroid is the last thing you need. More alarmingly, a study done in Hawaii in 2000 showed a correlation between the amount of tofu subjects ate in middle age and their rate and severity of cognitive problems in old age. Because scientists suspect the problem lies
with the soy estrogens that have been so highly touted, any unfermented soy product, including canned soybeans, is suspect.

This doesn't mean we should completely shun soybeans and soy products, but we need to approach them with caution and eat them in moderation. Because many low-carb specialty products are soy-heavy, you'll want to pay attention there, too. Personally, I try to keep my soy consumption to 1 serving a week or less.

•
Blackstrap molasses
—What the heck is molasses doing in a low-carb cookbook?! It's practically all carbohydrate, after all. Well, yes, but I've found that combining Splenda with a very small amount of molasses gives a good, brown-sugar flavor to all sorts of recipes. Always use the darkest molasses you can find. The darker it is, the stronger the flavor, and the lower the carb count. That's why I specify blackstrap, the darkest, strongest molasses there is. It's nice to know that blackstrap is also where all the minerals they take out of sugar end up. It may be high-carb, but at least it's not a nutritional wasteland. Still, I use only small amounts.

Most health food stores carry blackstrap molasses, but if you can't get it, buy the darkest molasses you can find. Most grocery store brands come in both light and dark varieties.

Why not use some of the artificial brown-sugar flavored sweeteners out there? Because I've tried them, and I haven't tasted one I would be willing to buy again. Caution: Splenda brown sugar blend contains sugar.

•
Broths
—Canned or boxed chicken broth and beef broth are very handy items to keep around and certainly quicker than making your own. However, the quality of most of the canned broth you'll find at your local grocery store is appallingly bad. The chicken broth has all sorts of chemicals in it and often sugar as well. The beef broth is worse. It frequently has no beef in it whatsoever. I refuse to use these products, and you should, too.

However, there are a few canned or boxed broths on the market worth buying. Many grocery stores now carry a brand called Kitchen Basics, which contains no chemicals at all. It is packaged in quart-size boxes, much like soy milk. Kitchen Basics comes in both chicken and beef. Health food stores also have good quality canned and boxed broths. Both Shelton and Health Valley brands are widely distributed in the United States.

Decent packaged broth will cost you a little more than the stuff that is made of salt and chemicals but not a whole lot more. If you watch for sales,
you can often get it as cheaply as the bad stuff, so stock up. When my health food store runs a sale on good broth for 89 cents a can, I buy piles of it!

One last note:
You will also find canned vegetable broth, particularly at health food stores. This is tasty, but because it runs much higher in carbohydrates than chicken and beef broths, I'd avoid it.

•
Bouillon or broth concentrates
—Bouillon or broth concentrate comes in cubes, crystals, liquids, and pastes. It is generally full of salt and chemicals and doesn't taste notably like the animal it supposedly came from. It definitely does
not
make a suitable substitute for good quality broth if you're making a pot of soup. However, these products can be useful for adding a little kick of flavor here and there—more as seasonings than as soups. For this use, I keep them on hand. I now use a paste bouillon concentrate product called Better Than Bouillon that comes in both chicken and beef flavors. I find it preferable to the granules or cubes.

•
Carb Countdown
—When I wrote the original edition of this book, the Atkins Boom of 2003 was still going strong, and grocery stores were carrying a lot of low-carb specialty products, some dubious, other quite useful. Carb Countdown, a carbohydrate-reduced milk put out by Hood Dairy, was one that I found very useful, and accordingly I used it in several recipes.

Things have changed. Hood still makes the product, though they long since renamed it Calorie Countdown. However, far fewer stores are carrying it than were when the original edition came out. If you can find Calorie Countdown near you, great! If not, here are some possible substitutions, and their carb counts:

LC-Milk:
As I write this, a company called LC Foods has just introduced a powdered low-carb milk product called LC-Milk. Because it's powdered, it is easy to ship and easy to store. You simply combine the powder with water and heavy cream, and chill, though I'm thinking for a slow cooker recipe the chilling part would be unnecessary. Sufficient powder to make 1 cup (235 ml) of milk, or 10 teaspoons, has 1 gram of carb, with 1 gram of fiber, for 0 grams usable carb. The cream adds 1 gram of carb. The two combined have 192 calories per cup. The mix has no lactose, though there would be a little in the cream. LC-Milk is available from
www.holdthecarbs.com
, and may well be carried by low-carb online retailers by the time this sees print.

Half-and-half:
10 grams of carbohydrate per cup. Of the substitutes available at your grocery store, this will likely give a result most similar to
the original recipe. (For international readers: Half-and-half is a mixture of half milk, half heavy cream.) Adds 187 calories over the Carb Countdown.

Heavy cream:
7 grams carbohydrate per cup. Obviously, this will give a richer result. Adds 684 calories. On the other hand, I've long since started trying to get 75 percent of my calories from fat, and I consider butterfat to be a healthful food. Your call.

Heavy cream and water, in equal parts:
This works well in many recipes, and of course it gives a lighter result than pure cream. Simple third-grade arithmetic tells me you'll get 3.5 grams of carbohydrate, and an extra 342 calories per cup.

Almond milk:
I've been playing around with almond milk recently, and I like it. It's now widely available in big grocery stores; look for it near the soy milk. (I would
not
use soy milk. I try to minimize my soy consumption. I'm unconvinced the stuff is safe.) Keep in mind that almond milk comes in sweetened and unsweetened varieties; obviously you want the unsweetened kind. The brand I've been getting has just 1 gram of carbohydrate per cup, with 1 gram of fiber, for 0 grams usable carb, so this would be your lowest carb option. It's also far and away the lowest calorie choice, at just 35 calories per cup. It will, however, have a somewhat different flavor than dairy—mild and pleasant, but different. This is also a lactose-free choice.

Milk:
You know—just milk. It's 12 grams of carb per cup, so it's the highest carb choice, but in a recipe that makes, say, 5 or 6 servings, that's not disastrous. I'd recommend whole milk. Butterfat is nutritious, and it certainly tastes better than the low-fat stuff. It's an extra 22 calories per cup.

Final note:
I've heard from some readers that their grocery stores dropped Carb Countdown, but started re-stocking Calorie Countdown due to customer requests. So, it doesn't hurt to ask.

•
Cauliflower
—You'll notice a certain reliance on cauliflower in this book, both in the form of “Fauxtatoes” (see recipe
page 343
) and in the form of Cauli-Rice (see recipe
page 343
). This is because many slow cooker recipes make wonderful gravy, and it's a shame not to have a side dish to help you eat it. (Indeed, traditional slow cooker recipes show a similar dependence on potatoes, rice, and noodles.)