If you have a busy lifestyle that involves a lot of time spent outside of the house, you may often be missing out on the comforts of a home-cooked meal.
If you come home after a long day of work or running errands, the last thing you want to do is stand around the kitchen cooking, so you’re most likely turning to take-out or frozen meals.
This is where a slow cooker comes in! It is an appliance that enables you to arrive home to a freshly made meal without any of the labor or supervision required for traditional cooking.
This is a method of cooking that works best for high-moisture foods like stews and soups because it requires the use of water to generate steam inside the main chamber.
You may be wondering how exactly this works and what temperature of water you should be adding.
You can put both hot and cold water in a slow cooker prior to cooking but warm water will aid in reaching cooking temperatures faster, as the slow cooker won’t have to heat the water as much. Adding boiling water will decrease the preheat phase even further. If your slow cooker has been heated, cold water could cause the interior to crack because of the sudden temperature changes.
If the mechanics of a slow cooker still seem confusing or intimidating to you please read on! I will be going through the specifics of how water works in your slow cooker and sharing some tips to ensure you are making the most of your slow cooker and its many meal-making possibilities.
How Do Slow Cookers Work?
Slow cookers heat your food, as the name suggests, slowly, in a sealed environment where the condensation from the food is trapped inside and acts as a baster, making your food moist and tender.
A slow cooker has three main components: the base (which contains the heating element), the vessel (where you place your food), and the lid (which keeps the heat and moisture with a tight seal).
Using your slow cooker is similar to using a dutch oven on a stovetop. The heat comes from the bottom in both cases and transfers up to the sides of the pot, heating the food that is located inside.
A slow cooker has a temperature-setting dial that moves from low to high heat and works in the exact same manner the dial on a stovetop does.
Slow cookers are best for recipes like stews, soups, or anything that contains ingredients that do well in a moist environment for a prolonged amount of time (so things like potatoes, root vegetables, and meats.
Do You Need To Preheat a Slow Cooker?
Pre-heating the slow cooker is a step that is often skipped or overlooked. People often look to maximize the ease of using a slow cooker by simply throwing all the food in and then turning the slow cooker on.
It really is that easy, but 20 minutes of patience that allows your slow cooker to heat up while you attend to other things before you head out for the day really makes a difference.
Most slow cooker recipes require you to saute your aromatics (such as onions and garlic) before adding them to the slow cooker. Doing this and then adding the food to a cold vessel resets the work that you did to heat it in the first place.
If you preheat your pot while you are preparing the aromatics you are essentially saving time because your slow cooker doesn’t need to do any extra work to bring your food back up to a certain temperature.
If you want to heat your slow cooker faster and eliminate any worries that come with heating it empty, you can add hot or boiling water to it for when it preheats and simply drain the water once you’re ready to add your food.
What Adding Hot Water to a Slow Cooker Does
Because a slow cooker works at a low heat that makes everything take longer to cook, water takes a long time to reach a boiling point.
If you’re already working with hot ingredients, adding hot water ensures that the food remains at that temperature and doesn’t cool down. Keeping everything warm also keeps your food out of the danger zone for bacteria growth.
What Adding Cold Water to a Slow Cooker Does
Putting cold water into the already hot chamber of your slow cooker may cause the interior to crack. If you are adding cold water to your slow cooker and heating it along with the water then there is less of a risk of damage occurring but your water will take longer to heat up.
If you add cold water to a heated slow cooker with food already in it then you are cooling the food back down and risk creating an environment for bacteria to get into it.
Can You Add Boiling Water to a Slow Cooker?
You can definitely add boiling water to a slow cooker if you want to speed up its preheating time or simply heat your food a little quicker.
Water takes a long time to come to a boil so if your recipe requires very hot water, you can bring it to a boil in advance.
How Much Water Should You Put In a Slow Cooker?
If you are using a recipe developed specifically for the slow cooker then your best bet is to follow the recipe exactly. The amount of water you use will often depend on the nature of the meal you are making.
If you are adjusting a traditional recipe to make it in the slow cooker, you should use half the amount of water that the recipe calls for because the water in a slow cooker does not evaporate the way that it would on the stovetop.
Can You Add More Water While Slow Cooking?
Unless you are making a soup or a thin stew, you probably won’t want to add any more water to your slow cooker while it is cooking.
Lots of ingredients like vegetables and meat release juices as they are cooking so most recipes will not require any extra liquid to be added while cooking.
You can definitely add ingredients at any point throughout the cooking time because some foods don’t require as much time to cook as others.
This means that you can also add water at any point and it should be warm so it doesn’t disturb the temperature of your food which has been cooked halfway.
If you are adding pasta or grains to your meal, you will want to do so near the end of the cooking time because their texture will suffer if they are overcooked.
In this case, you may want to add more water because things such as pasta and grain will absorb some of it as they cook.