If you love home food and experimenting with flavors and extravagant recipes, a slow cooker is a must-have in your home. You don’t have to worry about washing too many dishes or excessive fuel wastage. While frying, baking, and boiling food gives a new texture to food, sometimes it even changes its taste. A slow cooker, though, simmers the ingredients and brings out the original flavors, retaining the inherent nutritional aspects as well.

When do you need a slow cooker?

A slow cooker is your go-to for extravagant and comfort food, healthy snacks, or easy-to-make dishes. This is a must-have if you are someone who gets too lazy to cook or if you are too busy to plan the cooking process.

Additionally, it’s a great way to cook for someone who does not love doing the dishes; all you have to do is clean a single pot. Let us look at some quick, easy and tasty slow cooker recipes. All you require here is patience, quality ingredients, proper planning, and, most importantly, a slow cooker.

Best slow cooker recipes

Tasty hicken pot roast

When nights are colder and days are shorter, all we love is healthy, warm comfort food.

You can either use a whole chicken or large chunks of chicken, add some cut vegetables like carrots or baby potatoes, and oil or butter, as you prefer.

Add sauces and seasonings of your choice. You could make it traditionally or change it up with some barbecue flavor or teriyaki sauce.

Then, add water to the mixture and immerse the chicken with all the other ingredients. Add salt to taste and switch on your slow cooker.

This chicken pot roast will be ready in two hours, and you can either serve it with hot rice or bread, whoever you like.

Vegan stew

Instead of big chunks of beef or chicken, you can make a healthy stew with root vegetables. Vegan dishes are now preferred by many and are nutritious. You can either add veteable-based proteins that also have a meat-like feel, like some soy chunks or button mushrooms.

Like in the previous recipe, add your protein (in this case vegan protein), and add vegetables of your choice, including carrots, peas, potatoes, mushrooms, and sweet potatoes.

You can also add some chili paste for a kick of spice or seasonings of your choice. Many recipes also call for coconut oil to give it a distinct taste, but it’s optional.

Let it slow cook in the cooker for about 1-2 hours or until the veggies are mushy and soft.

Add coconut, cashew, or any vegan milk of your choice if you like that creamy texture. Simmer it for another 10 minutes, and your stew is ready to serve.

Creamy Italian chicken

A slow cooker will be your best option if you want a restaurant-style creamy Italian chicken full of flavors. While an oven may burn it or lose flavors and the traditional pot style is too much work, this option will work perfectly.

This recipe calls for some large pieces of chicken breast. Slow cook them in medium heat for 2 hours with Italian spices, oregano mix, and basil leaves. Also, add water and salt as per your taste.

After the chicken has cooked, add cream cheese, butter, and chicken broth and simmer for another 10-15 minutes.

Serve it with fresh seasoning of dill or cilantro.

Slow cooker rice pudding

If you want a tummy and heart-filling meal that feels tropical, you cannot miss a rice-based meal. You may also like Asian, Indian, or Mexican rice, which is undoubtedly many people’s comfort food. Since we have discussed savory dishes, let us have a rice-based dessert.

Add some unsalted butter, 1 cup of rice, 3 cups of milk, 1 cup of water, and 1/4th cup of sugar to the slow cooker.

Then, add a pinch of salt and stir it. Cook this for about 3 to 4 hours until the rice is cooked thoroughly and becomes creamy.

Add 1/4th cup of condensed milk and garnish with cinnamon raisins and nuts. Serve it hot on a cold day, but even a chilled version tastes just as good when it’s warm.

These are some of the recipes you can try to cook with slow cookers. It is a new-age modification of an age-old cooking method, which is also easy. There are hundreds of such recipes you can cook in the slow cooker. Moreover, you will not be limited by cooking only one style or cuisine. With a slow cooker, you need comparatively lesser oil to get things cooked, so it’s much healthier. The most important thing to remember is to plan everything ahead of time and use the right ingredients.