Slow cooker report - Part the second

I am fast coming to the conclusion that where the slow cooker recipe books talk about cooking on “low”, that corresponds on my cooker to “medium” and that “low” on mine corresponds to the recipe books’ “use the warming function if you have one”. That makes sense, and seems to work! And the manufacturer’s instructions are very clear that the optimal results are gained by using the cooker on medium.

Although, I didn’t yesterday!

We picked up some stewing lamb in the Waitrose in Harrogate on Sunday. I have no idea what cut it was, but each piece was about the size of half a standard playing card (but thicker, obviously) and most of them had a piece of bone attached.

I more or less followed the recipe in one of the books for lamb in mint and tomato, except that I added a bit more stock. I cooked it on low because the recipe said to cook it for 4 hours on their version of low and I knew I would be away for upward of 12 hours. Oh - and I prepared it the night before. We are both still in bounding good health :-)

And it worked perfectly well. I can’t say the house was absolutely redolent with the aroma of stewed lamb when we got home, but I turned the cooker up to high for half an hour, which upped the redolence factor to a more than satisfactory level.

One of the problems I have always had with crockpots and pressure cookers is that the “sauce” you end up with tends to be very thin, more like a broth than a sauce. I find this a bit with slow cookers as well. I prefer a thicker gravy or sauce. With thinner ones I find the mashed potato goes soggy and the vegetables are inclined to swim about! And the flavour is a bit thin as well. So I took most of the sauce out of the slow cooker before serving and reduced it by half in a saucepan. Then I thickened it slightly with some rice flour which I happened to have hanging about, then stirred everything back in together.

It was absolutely delicious! Although next time I will put more garlic and more mint in.

We ate all the lamb, but there is still enough of the sauce left for The Builder to have it as lunchtime soup.

Our Slow Cooking adventures were nearly brought to a premature end when The Builder was washing up after dinner. He oh-so, oh-so nearly broke the cooking bowl on the floor! He caught it by *this much* before it crashed to the ground.

Pork hocks next. Friday.