Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Family Favorites

by Beth Hensperger

Rare book

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Cooking

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Beth Hensperger is a passionate professional- and home- baker who is both extremely creative and extraordinarily prolific as an author and developer of quality recipes. Her training included a ten-year apprenticeship as a restaurant and hotel pastry chef as well as having her own custom wedding cake business and attending classes given by some of the top bakers in America. Though restaurant trained, she considers herself more of a dedicated home baker than a chef.
Beth’s writing career began when she was chosen as the Guest Cooking Instructor for the March 1985 issue of Bon Appetit. She is now the author of fifteen cookbooks, many of them best sellers. Her most recent books include: Williams Sonoma Breads (Weldon Owen), Bread For Breakfast (Ten Speed Press), and The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook (HCP). The Bread Bible (Chronicle Books) is the recipient of The James Beard Foundation Award for Baking in 2000. Beth's Basic Bread Book (Chronicle Books), a sequential text for the beginning home baker, published in the Fall of 1996, was chosen as one of the best baking books of the year by People Magazine. She has been nominated twice for the IACP Julia Child Cookbook Awards. Her books are all represented at the prestigious Culinary Collection of the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
When she isn't up to her elbows in flour, Beth is a monthly food columnist with the San Jose Mercury News "Baking By the Seasons". She is a regular contributor to Cooking Pleasures, Food & Wine, Shape Magazine, Bon Appétit, Veggie Life, and Pastry Art and Design Magazines.

Reviews

[Amy]

I didn't really like Hensperger's first slow cooker cookbook because she tended to ruin lots of the recipes with ingredients like ketchup, mustard, and vinegar. However, the recipes in this cookbook are much, much, much better. One thing that I appreciate about her cookbooks are that she tends to call for whole foods rather than processed foods as ingredients for the most part. This cookbook also has quite a variety of recipes that aren't just a hunk of meat in a slow cooker with a different sauce than the page before.

The book has sections for ....
*Hot drinks (like buttered mulled apple juice and fresh gingerale)
*Appetizers (like slow-steamed artichokes with red pepper aioli and butterbean hummus)
*Breakfasts (like breakfast couscous with dates & nuts and tortilla egg casserole)
*Salads (like thai beef and pasta salad and curried chicken salad with raisins & apples in pitas)
*Sandwiches (like french dip sandwiches with sauteed green peppers and mini turkey meatball sliders)
*Soups (like creamy tomato basil soup and vegetable lentil soup with cumin, coriander, & lemon)
*Roasted Meats (like old fashioned meatloaf with fresh tomatoes & two cheeses and garlic-rosemary leg of lam with tabbouleh mint salad)
*Roasted Poultry (like thai-style ginger chicken thighs and whole chicken stuffed with rice and golden raisins)
*Stews (like spiced vegetable stew with almonds & currants and chianti & cherry beef stew)
*Veggies & Sides (like spinach & cheese soufflé and lynn's green enchilada casserole)

In addition to the recipes, she offers helpful tips about how to convert regular recipes for the slow cooker, what healthy sides and toppings to serve with slow cooked meals, how to make quick slow cooker meals out of simple things in the pantry, and other nice ideas.

The recipes I've made so far have been these:
*Oatmeal With Cranberries & Apples -- This cooks overnight using steel cut oats which have a nice texture the next morning, but it would have been better if the apples hadn't turned to mush. I didn't add cranberries.
*Black Beans -- A simple recipe for black beans that requires a little help from a jar of salsa. Quite good and easy.
*Barbecue Burgers -- These were amazing. I'd never thought of cooking burgers in a slow cooker before, but it worked great. I'll certainly make them again.
*Pork Roast With Sweet Potatoes -- The crystallized ginger and sweet potatoes really made this recipe amazing. Now I'm convinced that sweet potatoes always belong with roast.

I think, though, that in the future I'm going to cook with the slow cooker mainly when I can be there to turn it off in the shortest amount of time suggested by the recipe. Overcooked meat can so quickly turn from tasting great to tasting like canned dogfood. There's so much in this book I'd like to try, so maybe I'll make them on the weekend when I can supervise the timing more closely.

Note: While I critique both purchased and free books in the same way, I'm legally obligated to tell you I received this book free through the Amazon Vine program in return for my review. Blah blah blah.

[Kristen Northrup]

I had high hopes for this cookbook because several friends had raved about others in the series. And it does (mostly) read well. Many delicious sounding recipes and a really handy general advice section. But at least a few recipes are missing steps on closer reading (although the publisher is great about promptly replying to emails with the answer). And the two recipes I actually tested turned out very badly. One was hurt on several levels by too much oil and (and!) butter and one was just bland. It's not my new crockpot -- I then tried similar recipes from books I already owned and they turned out great. There were a couple others I really wanted to test but they have even more expensive ingredients than the first two and I just can't take that chance. Fortunately, this was a library copy.

[Laura]

This series is great. Lots of everyday recipes for the family, with not too many ingredients. Most of these would take a family of 4 through two dinners, or at least a dinner and a lunch. The food is kid-friendly without being bland.

Highlights for me were the tomato basil and mushroom barley soups. Very easy, very good. Some of the pork recipes were also good, and they have a page and a half on easy soups you can cook in time for lunch. Some of the hints and tips are repeated from their other books, but many are geared towards families.

I took a star off because this book doesn't include any nutrition information, though I feel the recipes run a gamut - there are several that are healthy and some more indulgent, but that information would be great. Also, there aren't any deserts in here - for me that's not an issue (I don't usually use my slow cooker for that), but FYI.

[Sandra]

Most of the recipes call for buying special ingredients, spices, herbs, that one may not have on hand. I think the purpose of a Slow Cooker is to simplify cooking, or make a great meal without heating up the house, or when you are in a rush. But not to make a gourmet meal that you need to go out and buy ingredients you may only use that once. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that, but the author takes slow cooking up a notch. Obviously her intent. Therefore the book would not be too useful to me. However, being a sucker for desserts, there were some truly great ideas, and some of them would be good to try, like banana cake with pineapple. Also the book has great advice and information on how Slow Cookers actually work, and what features to look for.

[Camela]

I am so excited about this cookbook! We don't get out of church until 5:00, so my slow cooker is my best friend lately. This cookbook has ideas for breakfast (I can't wait to try steel-cut oats), light and fresh dinners, plus sides. I think I may have to go buy this one since someone else wants it from the library. Yes, I love to read cookbooks!

[Judy Heintz]

it has some interesting recipes, just not many my family would eat