Top Crock Pot Ingredients for Your Pantry

The marvelous thing about slow cooking is the way that you can throw a tasty meal together with just a a couple of ingredients from the store cupboard.

Your slow cooker will pay for itself very quickly. The hours you save when you are cooking your meal makes it priceless. But, if you plan to make slow cooking part of your usual meal times, then it pays to have a few basics to keep in your cupboards to make meal planning easy.

Beans - Beans are a very economical source of protein that cook very well in slow cookers . Every bean has its own flavor which is increased by the herbs or spices you use to cook with them. Beans can make a meal base when you cook them with meat or even be the main ingredient if you are a vegetarian who wants to make a simple and speedy dish. Whether borlotti, lentil, haricot, or black-eyed, beans can be the start of some fantastic slow cooker dishes.

Fibrous Vegetables - For starters, these means good old spuds and the average kitchen has at least a few potatoes lurking around in the vegetable rack.They are a very versatile food. Mash them, fry them, stew them, or chuck them in the crockpot.

Potatoes add density to soups, stews and meat-free meals. Potatoes and other fibrous veggies like carrots, turnips and swedes, take a while to cook, so they can be added to the slow cooker with meat and can cook all day.

Fresh Herbs - Using herbs can dramatically change the flavour of almost any meal you make. Herbs can be bought dried, but they release a much better flavour if they are added fresh.

You can also grow your own fresh herbs in the house in pots on your kitchen window sill. All you need is some compost, a nice sunny spot, and to remember they need regular watering. Herbs you've grown yourself can even be dried to extend their life, making them easy to keep around without worrying about wasting them.

Remember to add your herbs are added near the end of the slow cooker cooking cycle so their flavour infiltrates the cooked meal and isn't lost during the cooking time.

Learn more about oval slow cookers. Stop by Jayne Fairclough's site where you can find read a slow cooker review and find out what they can do for you.