Chef Kevin Dundon joined Jennifer Zamparelli on RTÉ 2FM to share some top tips for getting the most out of your slow cooker. Listen back above.
Praising the slow cooker for its ability to cook a number of meals in one go, Kevin insists that it is the perfect way to batch-cook your meals ahead of time. The one thing to remember, he says, is to reduce your liquids.
"Reduce the liquid by a third because you have a lid on top of the slow cooker so the liquid doesn't evaporate," he explains.
As a delicious dinner staple in many an Irish household, the celebrity chef talked Jen through a slow-cooker version of chicken cacciatore.
"You just sear off your chicken breast and put it into your slow cooker. Add your raw vegetables and tomatoes into the slow cooker. Put the lid on high and it cooks in about two and a half hours - which is fantastic - or put it on low and cook it for four hours."
Getting into the nuts and bolts of the machine, Jen asks if at any point in the slow-cooking process, should we be lifting the lid to give things a stir?
"I don't go near it," insists Kevin. "You can either put this on before you go to bed and it will be ready in the morning, or if you put it on in the morning, when you come back from whatever you've been doing during the day, it will be cooked."
"What's beautiful is that it will just stay hot," he adds. "It will go through the cooking process and then it will go to a warming temperature, so it's literally just sitting there like a Bain Marie [food warming appliance], so if the family are coming in at different times and want to take a bowl of stew or a bowl of chili con carne or bolognese it's ready to go. It's stress-free cooking."
Another dish he recommends for busy families is a warming dish of macaroni and cheese.
"You put in your raw pasta, your cream, and your cheese, and your salt and pepper into your slow cooker. Put that in and let that cook - it will take about two hours. What happens is the cheese kind of forms a crust of the macaroni. Flip it into a platter and you will have this lovely crust on the outside, you can break through and it's lovely and moist on the inside. That's superb."
For more delicious recipes and slow cooker tips, listen back to Kevin Dundon's interview above. To sign up for his one-pot wonder slow cooker course, visit KevinDundon.com.
