The only things I could think of are the browning steps (which are often skipped in the “let’s throw everything in the slow cooker at once with as little prep as possible” recipes) and possibly lack of evaporation (which concentrates flavors) by keeping the lid on the whole time. But both of those would show up in stovetop cooking, too, if you skip browning or always keep the lid on your pot.
Husband can taste the “crock pot flavor” too, and dislikes it; therefore, we don’t crock pot things. I didn’t grow up with one, so I have had very few crock pot dishes, and don’t know anything about this alleged flavor.
Until we can establish, through blind and repeatable testing, that “crock pot flavor” really does exist, and is disagreeable, we may be arguing about nothing.
It may be like arguing whether Bigfoot’s hair is curly brown or wavy black.
Crock-pot flavor does exist, it’s like a burnt-but-not-burnt taste.
I kinda maybe almost know what you mean. But to me it is more of a texture difference. We’ve been cooking chicken in a slow cooker and I am slowly (get it?) concluding that I don’t like it as much. It’s texture is a bit mealy.
Or maybe I’m overcooking it.
ETA: Ted Nugent here too.
mmm
If your chicken is getting mealy, I assume you’re using breast meat, and you are cooking it too long.
Exactly…cream of porn soup? :dubious: THERE’s your problem.
Note to self: investigate possibilities for “cream of porn.”
It’s just that so many crock pot recipes, like midwest casseroles, contain cream-of-something soup.
Topped with cheese at the end.
I know exactly what the OP means. For years I’ve very rarely had any crock pot recipe with beef come out good. It usually has that bitter, metallic taste. It doesn’t matter if I brown the meat first or not, it doesn’t matter how rare or well-done it is. Always that bitter taste.
Just a couple of months ago I was looking into it and found some forum where a couple of people said the taste comes from tomatoes. Apparently when cooking beef in tomato sauce, or even stewed tomatoes, the acidity of the tomatoes is imparted into the beef, giving it that taste. It’s recommended to leave any tomatoes or tomato sauce out of the crock pot, and stir it in at the end.
I thought about it, and realized that what I’d been cooking usually had tomatoes of some kind. So I experimented by making a recipe without any tomatoes whatsoever, and the meat came out fine. No bitter taste!
I have not yet tried making a recipe with tomatoes but holding them until the end. The girlfriend isn’t in to this idea, she thinks the tomato flavor will be too overpowering. She may be right.
So, purely anecdotal, but that’s my experience.
Hmmm… I have to wonder about that, as plenty of chili and “Sunday gravy” type tomato sauces are cooked for hours and hours with tomato in them and I’ve never noticed a metallic flavor to them. But if it worked for you, well, it worked and I wonder what the deal is. (Other than these two, I don’t use much, if any, tomato in my stews otherwise.)
The crock pot flavor is real. I have a difficult time getting my family to like crock pot food and I can’t really blame them. they claim, not incorrectly, that it all tastes the same. It’s not so much the flavor as the texture. It’s all the same bland mush. everything is mush in a crock pot. By the time you’ve cooked the food for eight hours, all the flavor notes has leveled out into one. There’s no dimension to it. It’s great for beans or shredded pork, but all those chicken thigh dishes all over Pinterest just taste the same.
I recently got a crock pot with a cast aluminium insert instead of ceramic. I can brown the meat on the stove in it, so we’ll see if it changes the flavor. I don’t think it will change the texture though. I have experimented with adding things near the end of cooking time and it does help adding some complexity to the flavor.
I was gonna say, adjust cooking times and add things in batches, judging by when they’ll be done. If the texture of the meat you’re cooking is too soft for you, either cook at a lower temp or reduce the cooking time. There’s no good reason I could see to cook chicken thighs for eight hours, unless I’m making a stock and will not be using the meat. Four hours on low, tops. That said, when most people cook in a crockpot, I find they generally just want to put everything in all at once and come back to dinner hours later, not do various vegetable dumps along the way. I don’t currently do crock pot cooking (I dumped the old crockpot we had in the house not because it didn’t work well, but because it was unnecessary), but I essentially do the same exact thing on the stovetop in a Dutch oven, and my usual method for anything involving vegetables is to do the meat and herbs in the liquid for the first few hours, and then add the carrots, potatoes, etc., for the last hour or so of cooking. And if I have delicate veggies like peas, they can go in at the last few minutes and the heat of the stew will warm them up enough to be cooked.
There’s your primary reason, OP (italics are mine).
What most people don’t realize is that you sacrifice a ton of taste for convenience. They just want something to eat after a long day.
I only use my crockpot for pulled meat, stews, and soups. I may do a chicken dish in it, but I won’t leave it on all day. Four hours tops.
It’s sort of analogous to “baked bean” flavor if that makes sense. Modern (read cheap) crock pots are prone to this because they have a temperature setpoint way too high for an all day or overnight simmer.
Interesting hypothesis about the tomatoes. I never noticed a ‘crock pot flavour’. After reading the post, it occurs to me that I don’t use tomatoes in the things I make in the crock pot.
“Crock Pot Flavor” would be a great perfume for you ladies.
Not as great would be “Cream of Porn”
‘Made with Vital Hormonal Secretions.’
“It’s good for the skin!”
I’ve noticed it, not bad just different. It’s lack of browning or “glaze” as in “deglaze the pan”, and things get overly broken down cooking for so long. Dales Reduced sodium steak seasoning is great way to impart that “deglazed flavor”. I use it a lot.