My slow cooker is my best-loved kitchen tool. What other small appliance can transform basic ingredients into long-simmered deliciousness and turn tough budget cuts of meat into melt-in-your-mouth meals while I’m at work? From pot roast to jambalaya and even desserts, my slow cooker can do just about anything.
But as I’ve learned, not everything should and can go in a slow cooker. Some, like quick-cooking proteins, are obvious, but others may surprise you. So what shouldn’t slow cookers be used for? Here are three crucial things to keep in mind the next time you set it and forget it.
3 Foods You Should Never Cook in a Slow Cooker
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Frozen Meat
Bacteria love to multiply in a temperature range called the food safety danger zone between 40°F and 140°F. Fortunately, modern slow cookers bring fridge-cold foods out of that zone and up to 170°F to 280 °F within a safe time frame, so slow cooking is absolutely safe—with one caveat.
Never start with frozen meat. If you add frozen cubed meat, poultry pieces, or roasts to a slow cooker, it will take longer for the meat to reach a safe temperature of 140°F or higher. This added time in the temperature danger zone increases chances of foodborne illness.
No matter how convenient the freezer-to-slow cooker move might seem, it’s not safe. Always defrost meat using best practices in the refrigerator, cold water, or the microwave before adding it to your slow cooker. And it bears repeating: Always check the internal temperature of meat when the time in the recipe is up before serving it, just to be safe.
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Kidney Beans
I was developing a chili recipe when I came across a four-alarm fact. Cooking dried or even soaked kidney beans in the slow cooker can make you very ill. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), dry kidney beans contain toxic levels of a protein called phytohemagglutinin (or PHA, aka kidney bean lectin). Slow cooking dried kidney beans can actually make them even more toxic, and just four or five beans cooked this way can cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and cramps.
Never fear, your homemade slow cooker chili isn’t completely cancelled. Soak dried kidney beans overnight, then boil them on the stove in fresh water for 30 minutes to denature the toxic protein. After that, they’ll be totally safe to slow cook. If all that prep is more than you want to deal with, opt for canned kidney beans, which are safe to use in the slow cooker.
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Too Much of Any Food
Slow cookers are designed to heat a specific volume of food safely. If you cram too much food into a slow cooker, it may struggle to bring everything up to the correct temperature in a safe amount of time.
Overfilled slow cookers also run the risk of spillover, which is not only messy, but can ruin the inside of the appliance beneath the ceramic cooking vessel. Always consult your appliance manual and never fill your slow cooker more than 1/2 to 2/3 full.
It’s also important to resist the urge to take a peek. Slow-cooked food smells amazing, and it’s hard not to lift the lid and check on the food while it cooks. But resist the urge unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Slow cookers work by trapping heat and steam, so every time you lift that lid, you’re losing about 20 to 25 degrees, and it takes time for the low-and-slow device to bring the temperature back up to the optimal range. Just let the cooker do its thing with no lid lifts, and you’ll be rewarded with a cozy meal with minimal effort.
Read the original article on Simply Recipes