Get Your Slow Cooker Meals Up And Running Quickly With This Time-Saving Tactic

Slow cookers are the perfect tool for hands-free cooking. Simply dump your ingredients into the pot in the morning with a dash of liquid — such as broth or water — switch on your appliance, and come back to a tender, bubbling stew at the end of the day. Better yet, if you have a busy morning up ahead, you can get your slow cooker meals up and running even faster with one time-saving tactic: preparing the ingredients the evening before and refrigerating them inside the slow cooker dish itself.

However, there are a couple of important points to bear in mind with this technique. First, if possible, allow your slow cooker insert to come up to room temperature before placing it inside. To do this, simply place it on the counter first thing in the morning to take the chill off while you get on with breakfast. Although there's no harm in putting your dish onto the heating element of your appliance directly from the fridge, it will affect the ramp-up time of your cooker — which means you'll need a slightly lengthier overall cook time to account for the cold start. 

Second, don't be tempted to switch on your empty slow cooker in a bid to preheat it before putting your fridge-cold dish on the heating element. Instead, make sure to always start with a cold slow cooker and cold dish so that both can come up to temperature at the same time.

Freezing the ingredients for a selection of slow cooker meals in freezer bags for a rainy day is another time-saving tip. Known as dump bags, these mixtures of protein, vegetables, and wet ingredients can be assembled well in advance and stashed in the freezer for emergencies. The key here is to defrost them overnight in the fridge before "dumping" the contents into your dish in the morning. Admittedly, this will add the extra step of having to empty the ingredients into another vessel, but you can do this quickly and also discard the bag — eliminating the need for any cleanup.

Have a sear function on your machine and want to fry protein, like a skin-on chicken thigh recipe, to trigger some flavorful caramelization? In this case, it makes better sense to refrigerate your ingredients in a separate container. Then, you can heat the internal dish, sear your meats inside it, and tumble in any vegetables and liquids near the end. It's also possible to preheat a slow cooker that doesn't have a sear function by filling it with hot water and switching it on. 

Lastly, other essential slow cooker tips that can make for better-tasting meals include cooking your food for longer at a lower temperature to allow meats to tenderize, and making sure you don't take the lid off your slow cooker. This is because opening it too often means the heat trapped inside will escape, lengthening your overall cooking time.