Slower cooker question!

[kima]

I bought a new slow cooker yesterday and today I am making a Borcsht recipe from the new Canadian Living mag.

I put it altogether four hours ago. It is suppose to cook for 6 hours. The carrots are still rock hard. :( I have now turned it up to high but 4 hours and things aren't cooked much if at all??? (yes the cooker is working). Is this normal?

[kima]

This is the first time I have ever posted on the wrong board.I'll move it over but if anyone here has had this experience I'd love to hear about it.

[tbb113]

Maureen: Are the carrots in the liquid? Is the liquid hot?

[ClaraB]

Maureen, hard vegetables like carrots and rutabaga take a long time to cook in the slow cooker (longer than meat). Most slow cooker cookbooks recommend cutting them into small pieces, and putting them at the bottom of the crockpot. In my experience, 4 hours on low is nowhere near long enough to cook them - they take 6-8 hours on low, at a minimum. Probably 2-3 more hours on high should be enough?

[kima]

Thanks for the info guys1 I am a SC newbie!

I sauteed the carrots, onions and celery before putting them in the cooker. i did put the heat up to high for the last two ours and finally everything was cooked.

SC cookery certainly isn't just a matter of dumping things and waiting. Most of the recipes seem to require a fair amount of prep. That's not a bad thing but if you are suppose to leave it all day does this mean you have to make dinner in the AM before work?
I can't make dinner before 3pm!:p

[vbak]

Yes, that's what it means.[wish I knew how to quote] Anyways, since you don't like to cook before 3:00, you could prep the day be fore and just put it together the next morning. I wanted to make the slow cooker Thai chicken last week , but I couldn;t get it together in the a.m. or when I came home for lunch so I made it in the oven. Somedays cooking is just too much to think about so early in the morning. Enjoy your new SC.

Vicky

[breadmama]

I've done that, too. My mornings are too full to add crock pot prep! I've just chopped everything and put it in a bag in the fridge. Then it's a matter of dump, stir, and go in the morning.

When we do use the cp, it's great when we get home. I need to use that more often!

Laurie

[tbb113]

Originally posted by vbak
Yes, that's what it means.[wish I knew how to quote] Vicky
Vicky, the bottom of each reply is a little button that says 'quote', press that and voila, the reply is quoted with the user's name (like I did yours)

You can also use the 'quote' button when you are creating a new reply (its above the box that I'm typing in now). Then you get a box to enter (or copy a quote from another post)

Hope that helps.

[vbak]

Originally posted by tbb113

Vicky, the bottom of each reply is a little button that says 'quote', press that and voila, the reply is quoted with the user's name (like I did yours)

You can also use the 'quote' button when you are creating a new reply (its above the box that I'm typing in now). Then you get

Hope that helps.

Thanks, Tyra!!:cool:

Vicky

[vbak]

Tyra, what if you don't want to quote the whole post? I tried this morning to only quote a few lines by highlighting and using the above box.. Didn't work.

Vicky

[CompassRose]

If you don't want to quote the whole box, do the "quote" anyway, then delete the bits you don't want. (But be sure not to delete the quote and bold tags at front and back.)

If you only want to quote a few lines, and use the "quote" button, it will only paste a limited number of characters into the dialogue box. If I want to use that, but have more than a sentence to put into it, what I do is open the dialogue box, then put a placeholder character (anything, a letter or whatever) in it. Then the tags will appear in the message screen, and I delete the placeholder, stick my cursor between the tags, and paste from the clipboard. Or of course you can simply enter the word 'quote' and '/quote' inside square brackets round whatever you want to quote!

[vbak]

Compass, I am REALLy COMPUTER ILLITERATE, and I am having trouble following the great help you are offering.:( Kima. sorry for hijacking this thread with my computer illiteracy.:(

[CompassRose]

(Sorry, kima)

Okay, say you want to quote from my post. You push the quote button under my post, and then you get the message window with -- at first -- EVERYTHING I wrote in it. See at the beginning where there are tags in square brackets []? First a thing that says "originally posted by CompassRose"-- leave that all alone. Then a B in brackets, then everything I wrote. You can select any of the stuff I wrote, and delete it, the way you delete any thing, just leave the B at the beginning, and the /B and /QUOTE at the end, alone.

Or the other thing. Say you start to post, then think, "Oh, I would like to quote from CompassRose's post". Okay, so you are already in the message window. You have all those handy little buttons up above you, that do bold and italic and links and all that stuff. You know how those work, right? click 'em, and a popup window comes up, you type what you want bold or underlined or red or whatever, then hit Enter and it appears in the message window, all tagged.

If it is just a short piece you want to quote, then go down to my post (down under the message window, scroll down, you can see the whole thread down there). Then you can select the piece you want to post, with your mouse. Now press the CTRL key and the C key, at the same time. That copies the bit into your faithful clip-board. Scroll back up to the message window. Click on the Quote button (next to the List button) and you get the window. Press the CTRL key and the V key, and your clip-board selection will Paste. Hit Enter, and there you go.

Only if you want to quote a longer bit, maybe a paragraph or two, the script in the popup can't handle it. You'll do the copy-paste trick, and only get a sentence or so in your tags, with the rest cut off. That's when, instead, you enter a random character (Q, say :) ) in the popup window. Then press Enter, and there! A "Q", inside quote /quote tags. Put your cursor behind the Q, press Delete to get rid of it, and without moving your cursor (you already did CTRL+C to get the thing on your clip-board) press CTRL+V and everything will paste right there, between the tags.

[blazedog]

Not to hijack Kima's thread but regarding crock pots, I really have had very little success finding recipes that are tasty -- all of the ones I've tried have been okay but the stove I've made on the stove or in the oven has been better.

This isn't a request for recipes per se but is there a motherlode of really good crockpot recipes -- I don't generally cook with a can of cream soup or a can of soda on the stove.

I've made the Rotisserie Crockpot chicken and it's a little too mushy for my tastes when done -- I prefer the texture of roast or sauted chicken.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction because theoretically I would love to just ladle out at the end of my workday. :)

[vbak]

Originally posted by CompassRose
(Sorry, kima)

[]? First a thing that says "originally posted by CompassRose"-- leave that all alone. Then a B in brackets, then everything I wrote. You can select any of the stuff I wrote, and delete it, the way you delete any thing, just leave the B at the beginning, and the /B and /QUOTE at the end, alone.

Or the other thing. Say you start to post, then think, "Oh, I would like to quote from CompassRose's post". Okay, so you are already in the message window. You have all those handy little buttons up above you, that do bold and italic and links and all that stuff. You know how those work, right? click 'em, and a popup window comes up, you type what you want bold or underlined or red or whatever, then hit Enter and it appears in the message window, all tagged.

If it is just a short piece you want to quote, then go down to my post (down under the message window, scroll down, you can see the whole thread down there). Then you can select the piece you want to post, with your mouse. Now press the CTRL key and the C key, at the same time. That copies the bit into your faithful clip-board. Scroll back up to the message window. Click on the Quote button (next to the List button) and you get the window. Press the CTRL key and the V key, and your clip-board selection will Paste. Hit Enter, and there you go.

Only if you want to quote a longer bit, maybe a paragraph or two, the script in the popup can't handle it. You'll do the copy-paste trick, and only get a sentence or so in your tags, with the rest cut off. That's when, instead, you enter a random character (Q, say :) ) in the popup window. Then press Enter, and there! A "Q", inside quote /quote tags. Put your cursor behind the Q, press Delete to get rid of it, and without moving your cursor (you already did CTRL+C to get the thing on your clip-board) press CTRL+V and everything will paste right there, between the tags. [/QUOT

[vbak]

Thanks, Compass. I think I got part of it. I deleted part of the 1st para in your post. I tried the control and c ,but I will have to work on that one. :)

[tbb113]

Originally posted by blazedog


This isn't a request for recipes per se but is there a motherlode of really good crockpot recipes -- I don't generally cook with a can of cream soup or a can of soda on the stove.



I know that there was a January Crockpot Thread. Search for Crockpot in the title only, limit the search to the last few months....you should get some good ideas there