The Lazy Cook

My latest acquisition is a slow cooker - actually I'm sure we used to have one years and years ago, but I don't know what happened to it.  Anyway it's a useful piece of kit - you just bung everything in first thing in the morning, turn it on and by tea-time you've got a nice tasty casserole.  There are lots of recipes on the web, but the basic idea is that you chop meat and vegetables up into bite-sized pieces, and put those in with some garlic (optional), some herbs and spices (the packet casserole mixes are a good time saver here) and some liquid - water, wine or stock.  And that's it.  You can fry the meat off for a few minutes first to seal it if you like otherwise the flavour tends to go into the liquid rather than stay in the meat, and one little tip from personal experience - don't overdo the liquid.  My cooker is 1.5 litres (more than adequate for one) and I've found that around 150-200ml of liquid is plenty.