Slow Cooker Cooking

When someone says "slow cooker," do you think of pot roast or chili? Now you can think Slow Cooked Salmon, Caramelized Onion Soup, falling-off-the-bone Lamb You Can Eat with a Spoon, and Flourless Pear Anise Soufflé. If these dishes whet your appetite, it's time to take that slow cooker out of the closet, plug it in, and get ready for Slow Cooker Cooking.

Lora Brody knows her appliances. She inspired a whole new generation of bread bakers with her best-selling bread machine books. Here she pushes the slow cooker to places no one ever expected it to go, inventing fruit bases for soufflés and ice creams, reducing milk and sugar to make Dulce de Leche, and infusing oils with herbs. In addition to creating innovative takes on one-pot meals such as classic New England Boiled Dinner, Venison Stew with Mushrooms, and Osso Buco with Gremolata, here you will find recipes for ingredients that are the basis for other dishes, such as Duxelles, Braised Chestnuts, and vegetable and chicken stocks. Vegetarians will enjoy recipes such as Ragoût of Leeks, Fennel, and Celery and Virtuous Lentil Soup, and dessert lovers will rejoice when they see recipes for Hazelnut Chocolate Fondue and Coconut Rice Pudding.

Creative cooking in the slow cooker doesn't mean giving up any of the convenience associated with this popular appliance. You still add the ingredients to the pot and go about your day (or evening), letting the slow cooker do all the work.

Thanks to the pot's sealed insert and consistently even heat, food cooks under ideal conditions to make it tender and bring out maximum flavor. Come home to a kitchen perfumed with an aroma that promises good things to eat and find a perfectly cooked dish to enjoy.

Lora Brody is the author of twenty-two cookbooks including The Kitchen Survival Guide, The Entertaining Survival Guide, Bread Machine Baking: Perfect Every Time, Desserts from Your Bread Machine: Perfect Every Time, Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet, and Pizza, Focaccia, Flat, and Filled Breads from Your Bread Machine: Perfect Every Time. Her recipes have appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. She lives outside of Boston.