I think the success of the crockpot oatmeal largely depends on the crockpot. I have a small one that is intended for fondue or gravy, and it makes perfect steel cut oats overnight. If your oatmeal is burning, the crockpot is clearly too hot.
Yeah, the steel cut oatmeal recipe depends a lot on the size/temperature of your crockpot. I haven a large crockpot, so I have to double the recipe to make it work. Otherwise it sticks and burns. Makes me want a smaller crockpot.
I’m going to have to join the Alton Brown dogpile and say that his baby back ribs were possibly the saltiest things I have ever attempted to eat. My mother tried the same recipe and had the same result. Oh…and add me to the list of dissatisfied slow cooked oats makers.
Yeah, you do have to mince the onion very, very finely- I do mine so that they basically melt into the sauce and there are no pieces at all, just a hint of onion flavor. I’ve made his mac n cheese many times, but the last time I made it, I cooked the roux on too high a heat and browned it too much. The whole thing ended up brown instead of it’s usual orange, and was curdled, kind of. But that was obviously my bad, not Alton’s.
Bingo. Potatoes Boulangère should be made with starchy type potatoes that will absorb the broth. Cook’s Illustrated had a lovely recipe that used half russet and half yukon gold potatoes. Very nice and much less fat than scalloped potatoes.
The show looked like waxy potatoes were being used. It seemed like the implication was most of the broth would evaporate off.
Didn’t see the show, but for that the baking vessel would have to be uncovered. When putting a dish into a common oven for baking the housewife sealed around the edge of the lid with dough so someone else couldn’t put something in or take anything out …
I would prefer to make it with mealy potatoes, reserve a part of the liquid and check it part way through and add more liquid if it needed it. That would give it a nice creamy texture from the starch going into solution while baking.
I’ve never tried it, but looking at the recipe, nothing looks too odd about it. It’s looks like a Cuban picadillo (which I have had and like), made with pot roast instead of ground beef. By “looks like,” I mean, pretty much identical. Typical recipe.
It’s pretty clearly (to me) inspired by the Cuban recipe above. When I hear olives & raisins, I think Cuban or Veracruzan. It may look it, but it’s not “avante garde.”
Here’s a Veracruzan chicken recipe, for instance. It’s got olives, capers, and raisins.
Ah, better yet, Puerto Rican beef stew may be the inspiration for that pot roast. Also includes olives, capers, raisins.
She is Canadian. She lives in Canada.
Also, she’s a stone cold fox and everything I’ve ever made from either of her cookbooks has turned out great. She’s no Rachel Ray though, you do actually have to know how to cook to benefit from her recipes.
Yeah, can I climb on the slow-cooked oats dogpile too? they lost all texture and were like extremely bland glue.
I make my oatmeal in the rice cooker now, and it turns out perfectly in 20 minutes. It just doesn’t need to cook for 8 hours, no matter how slowly.
I’ve made picadillo empanadas with ground beef and they were AWESOME. This was not awesome. For one thing, it also came out tough.
Gotcha. The ingredients and the general recipe look pretty good to me. Pot roast should not come out tough, though. However, if you just gave it a little more time (it looks like he uses chuck roast for this dish) it would have softened. I find that cooking times for stews and pot roasts–anything that involves meat breaking down over a period of time–are approximations at best. One cut of beef may soften in under two hours, another may take closer to three or more. I don’t see anything in that recipe (it looks like he calls for 3-3 1/2 hours) that should result in tough meat, so either it’s the beef itself that you used or, more likely, you should have just given it a bit more time. PS–looking at it, he calls for a 200F oven–I don’t think it would be done in that amount of time. I’d use a faster oven (300-325) to expect it to be finished in 3-3 1/2 hours.
I nominate anything by Sandra Lee … for example: Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Cherry Pie Test
One thing about Alton Brown recipes – you have to use the same brand of kosher salt he uses or the measurement is way off – Diamond Crystal Salt. But yeah, his pot roast recipe was not good.
OK, I’ve gotta check this out now. Olive-raisin pot roast for dinner tonight. One thing I will do different, though: I’m just dumping the meat in a Dutch oven. I see no reason for the foil pouch.
Alton is the best when it comes to the structure of a dish and the principles and science behind it, but he tends to fall flat when it comes to actual flavors. His meatloaf is a perfect example–great structure and texture, but the spices don’t work at all.
I saw him do a demo one time, and he said that the biggest change in his cooking in recent years is that he keeps everything much simpler than he used to, and that his spice cabinet is down to, like, 8 things.
(By the way, he also said that he hates raisins. “They’re always optional.”)
But then why did he use them? My point being that in many episodes you can tell that how the dish tastes is secondary, if that important. Note that there is relatively little of the taste the food and shudder with delight that every other cooking show has. Often the finished product is not shown.
The first several seasons when the show stuck to basics because of budget were the best. A basic ingredient or food type that he walked you through choosing and preparing a few simple applications. I will stick up for at least two of his recipes. His powerbar-esque rice krispie treats are great, although just a simple variation on an established recipe. He did a show on pork tenderloin that featured a line-chipotle marinade, I use it on pork chops and its good.
Ina Garten’s noodle kugel. Two words: Salt. Y.
I think he uses the foil pouch because there’s very little liquid in it. At least, compared to the amount of liquid I normally use in pot roast. I’m leery that without the pouch, you’ll evaporate off the liquid very early in the cooking process and end up with dry shoeleather.
It should be fine. You’d be surprised at how much water beef and an onion will release (as long as you have a tight-fitting lid), plus you have a cup of tomato juice in there, too. When I make stew or pot roast, I only add at most 1/2 cup of liquid. Add to that, you have a lot of collagen in pot roast cuts, which turn into gelatin in the long cooking process, and moisten the meat in the process. I’ve done smoked chuck roast, which is a slow dry-heat process, not using any sort of foil or enclosed container, and it comes out plenty juicy. Same concept as a pork shoulder.
ETA: What foiling and a small enclosed cooking space do help with, though, is speeding up the collagen rendering process.