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This is pretty specific to slow cooking meat. There's lots of good ways to slow cook meat. I think slow cookers(aka Crockpots) have a lot of downsides. If I've

• Mikeb85 5y ago
  > but I think too often give a universal mushiness to many cuts Lots of people like that, especially with sub-par cuts (blade roast anyone?).
  • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I sometimes wonder how many cooking techniques exist specifically to "upgrade" lower quality ingredients. Slow cooking, spices ... it's likely not a huge list, but I suspect it forms a notable part of the world's cooking cultures.
    • Mikeb85 5y ago
      Absolutely. I grew up spending lots of time on a farm, I've lived in a 3rd world country, plus have cooked for a living. The fact is, the majority of an animal is shitty cuts of meat. Even something like short rib is 'premium' compared to much of the carcass. So slow-cooking is great to turn a blade or round roast into something that doesn't suck. And definitely, a huge part of every food culture is cooking these subpar cuts.
      • bserge 5y ago
        I'm just here trying to understand what a "shitty cut" even means. For me, it's all meat. Some tastes better than other. But the baseline is "good". The old animal meat (from milk cows and goats, and egg hens) that I ate as a kid would probably horrify someone like you lol
        • graycat 5y ago
          > old animal meat? In one of his books, Escoffier explained that in making beef stock get better flavor starting with the meat of old animals. Soooo, I considered that, and in NY thought of retired dairy cows so called around. I got to a packing house in PA where I got an explanation "think fast food". So, maybe McDonald's, Burger King, etc. are serving the beef the Escoffier liked for making beef stock!
        • PeterWhittaker 5y ago
          Well, think of it this way: all cuts of meat have varying degrees of meat, fat, and gristle. The meat, properly cooked, adds texture and some flavour; the fat carries immense flavour but can overwhelm with grease; the gristle is mostly crap: no flavour, gets in your teeth, chewy, unpleasant, best discarded or ground into sausage. Broadly speaking. Some meat is so lean (bison, e.g.) that is must be cooked rare lest it become as dusty as the rest of Utah (the best bison I ever had was this fantastic place in southern Utah, hence the reference) and some meat is so fatty or gristly it must be slow cooked or braised or otherwise managed. And consider that how tough is a cut depends on its use: various fowl favour standing on one leg so the other is ceteris paribus more tender; cf also the reference above to the front legs of red deer. So “shitty meat” basically says “this animal did not lay about on fluffy cushions but scrambled for a living, except for this little bit here”. Some people rave over tenderloin aka filet mignon. I love it, if properly larded and cooked. Otherwise, I much prefer rib eye: juicier, more flavourful, even if a little gristlier. When I’m hungry, I don’t much care. When I have time and/or spare cash, a good starting piece well prepared is a joy.
      • EdwardDiego 5y ago
        Indeed - I hunt red deer, and the most useful meat is the back legs and back straps (muscles running along the spine) - the front legs and neck etc. are typically only used for mincing. Even then the cuts in the back legs vary in usefulness. And venison is notoriously lean, hence a lot of methods of cooking it involve larding to prevent it ending up a dry lump of chewiness.
    • have_faith 5y ago
      > it's likely not a huge list It's definitely a large list! every culture imaginable has a whole range of dishes specifically for elevating "basic" and "cheap" cuts of meat.
      • mmcdermott 5y ago
        It isn't limited to meat, either. Work has to go into making rhubarb something vaguely edible. Artichokes aren't all that appealing prior to good preparation. Calories used to be a lot more scarce than they are now.
        • nemetroid 5y ago
          Rhubarb is delicious raw.
        • phonypc 5y ago
          I'm curious what you're thinking of regarding rhubarb. As another reply pointed out, it's fine raw. Otherwise it's usually just cooked gently with some sugar.
        • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
          "good preparation" for artichokes in my life has always just meant "a good and thorough steaming". Nothing more. Helps to eat with a good garlic mayonnaise, but not critical.
        • TimedToasts 5y ago
          I will not stand for this rhubarb heresy!
        • gambiting 5y ago
          >Work has to go into making rhubarb something vaguely edible. Eh? You cut it into pieces, throw on some really basic sponge cake, bake for 30 minutes = delicious rhubarb cake. Or put it in a pan with some water and like a glass of sugar, boil for 10 minutes = rhubarb compote. Am I missing something?
      • 5y ago
    • boringg 5y ago
      I mean thats the majority of smoking meats (and providing longevity).
    • d4mi3n 5y ago
      What you describe is the primary motivation to the genesis of French cuisine: how do we take this crappy cut of meat or unpalatable vegetable we can get on the cheap and make it edible?
      • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        I suspect a lot of Indian cuisine also. No point debating which of the two has the best outcomes, is there? :)
        • d4mi3n 5y ago
          Agreed, I enjoy the results regardless of the origin!
    • wsc981 5y ago
      I live in Thailand now, but lived most of my life in The Netherlands. I live on the Thai countryside. Most of the pork and beef/buffalo meat my girlfriend buys in the village market, I don’t really enjoy. It’s often “chewy”. Apparently Thai people do like these kinds of meat, but I think The Netherlands would export most of this meat the 2nd or 3rd world countries. Those “chewy” kinds of meat would be ok when slow cooked I’d wager, perhaps in a Hungarian goulash [0]. I suspect the local pig farmers send the best cuts of meat to the big city, to sell for higher prices. At least the chicken meat is good. —- [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulash
    • dylan604 5y ago
      That's exactly where brisket comes from*. It was not considered a good cut of meat, so it was provided to the ranch hands. They figured it out. *at least to the bbq legends/mythos of bbq in texas
      • NortySpock 5y ago
        Kansas City also considers brisket a local specialty. (KC used to be a major stockyard and slaughterhouse as it sits both on the Missouri river and on a rail line.)
        • dylan604 5y ago
          I'll take a Texas tall tale against your KC doused in sauce version any day of the week, and twice on sunday. ;-)
    • bostik 5y ago
      My favourite is ox tail. Takes hours to cook through, but once you can grab a piece with tongs and get all the meat fall off with a slight shake, gives an absolutely gorgeous flavour to a slow simmer meat dish. Bonus: you can drain the liquid and put in in the freezer. Keeps good for a week or so. Wonderful gelatine and works with almost anything else as a base.
      • helloworld11 5y ago
        It lasts only a week even after being frozen? Seems odd.
        • bostik 5y ago
          Whoops, not freezer. Fridge. Thanks for spotting it.
  • phonypc 5y ago
    I don't think "sub-par cuts" makes sense as a category. Different cuts are just suited to different kinds of cooking. Calling a blade roast sub-par because it doesn't make good steaks makes about as much sense as calling tenderloin sub-par because it doesn't make a good braise.
    • Mikeb85 5y ago
      Blade isn't the best braising cut either. For braises short rib, chuck, oxtail, etc... are better. That's why I called it sub-par.
      • phonypc 5y ago
        Blade is chuck.
        • Mikeb85 5y ago
          My bad, dunno what I was thinking.
    • yissp 5y ago
      I think it's just that the cuts suited to slow-cooking techniques tend to also be the cheaper cuts. Maybe that's because they are generally from larger muscles and therefore in comparatively greater supply.
    • ofrzeta 5y ago
      It makes a bit of sense because a tenderloin is much less meat than say a brisket. It's also much more tender when cooked a short time. So traditionally it's meat for a more affluent audience while a brisket is sold to the poor. Or so the story goes.
• boringg 5y ago
  Pork shoulder in the slow cooker is great - lots of sub-par cuts are great in there.
  • kevinmchugh 5y ago
    I've never had a slow cooker pork shoulder that was nearly as good as one smoked, sous vide, slow-roasted, braised, or pressure cooked. Also pork shoulder is great! It's one of my favorite meats. It takes a long time to cook (because you have to render the collagen), but it's delightful.
    • boringg 5y ago
      To be fair - I'm not saying it is necessarily as good I should have caveated it as it is still quite good and way less involved. Return to effort ratio is high (and cost is low).
    • dylan604 5y ago
      >I've never had a slow cooker pork shoulder that was nearly as good as one smoked, Um, like duh! ;-) Slow cookers aren't for the foodie types looking for best recipes, it's for the "i got other things to do" types. I use the bejeebus out of my smoker. The problem that I have is that if I'm going through the work of using the smoker, I'm going to smoke everything in the fridge. I did a few racks of ribs and a tenderloin, but the fire was soo good that day I threw on a roast. Best roast I've had.
• lunatuna 5y ago
  With regards to beans, I'm always blowing up my beans in the pressure cooker or having them hard. I've not found the right touch to get what I can from a can or on the stove top. I need your secrets!
  • dkarl 5y ago
    With beans, cooking them fast is a double-edged sword. Now that I'm working from home, I prefer to cook mine in the oven, precisely because it takes hours, and I don't have to be precise and disciplined about checking on them. If I get caught up in work and check twenty minutes later than I planned, there's no risk of ruining them.
  • amluto 5y ago
    Try waiting for the pressure cooker to cool the point that it's no longer pressurized without releasing any steam. In general, if you have a container of wet things in a pressure cooker (e.g. a bean with its seed coat, but a jar with a lid works the same way), when the pressure outside the container drops below the pressure inside the container, the net force tries to expand the container. If the pressure inside the container drops below the vapor pressure of whatever is in the container (which is likely _above_ ambient pressure in a hot pressure cooker), the contents will boil, which can cause various unpleasant effects. This can be minimized by trying to keep everything inside roughly in equilibrium while the pressure drops below ambient. Or a pressurized cooling system could be used in which the pressure cooker is pressurized above the vapor pressure using something other than water vapor (e.g. air, but an inert gas could be used, too), and then the contents can be cooled as fast as desired without risk of boiling or rupturing anything. I've never heard of anything resembling the latter for home use. If I understand correctly, commercial canning operations will cool their jars under pressure while spraying the outside with disinfectant to minimize the risk of anything living getting in before the jars fully seal.
  • mrob 5y ago
    I recommend using an electric pressure cooker with a pre-soak mode. I use the "Multigrain" mode on an Instant Pot LUX60 with the "More" option active, which according to the manual gives 45 minutes of warm soaking followed by 60 minutes of pressure cooking in the same water. I use plenty of water and discard it after cooking to remove some of the indigestible oligosaccharides, and I do not find soaking in separate water to be necessary.
• ryanchants 5y ago
  But how much of the universal mushiness of slow cooking vs braising is that they usually have different definitions of done? In a lot of cases, braised dish ingredients are the same as slow cooker recipe ingredients. A braise has a lot of intentional steps to develop flavor, whereas a crock pot recipe normally just says "dump it all in a crock pot". But for the mushiness, I would say it's where a crock pot recipe often says "cook on medium setting for 8/10/12 hours", and a braised recipe says(should say) "cook until done". If you braised for the same amount of time crock pot convenience recipes use, you'd get the same amount of mushiness.
  • kevinmchugh 5y ago
    I think crockpot recipes tend to be wetter and covered, to allow for longer unattended cooks. That's the other typical difference
• regulation_d 5y ago
  100% agree on the braising in the oven vs. crockpot. A crockpot gives you 2 or 3 temp settings, where an oven can give you dozens or hundreds.
• Havoc 5y ago
  >It's great to be able to pull off beans from dry in an hour Also dry beans in a slow cooker is a bad plan anyway - there have been incidents of people getting sick cause slow cookers don't hit the required temp to get rid of the Phytohaemagglutinin. Pressure cookers are a much better plan for this as you say
  • locuscoeruleus 5y ago
    Depends on the bean you cook. Most beans are fine, kidney beans, for example, are not.
• turtlebits 5y ago
  Depends on the meat. I prefer braised (cooked in liquid) brisket/shank/tendon way more than cooked sous vide. I've tried the 8-48 hour sous vide with beef/pork and didn't find it worthwhile.
  • smiley1437 5y ago
    I was a big champion of sous-vide but I've realized that, while it can produce very precise texture results, it just doesn't develop as much flavor as something braised in the oven. The evaporation\reduction that occurs during a long braise in the oven significantly concentrates flavors in the meat and there are a lot of delicious Maillard reactions on the sides of the braising pot as well as on exposed bits of meat that just don't occur in a sous-vide bag. In fact, the bag prevents evaporation from occurring at all, and a quick sear post-bath doesn't quite achieve the same result. Water baths have their place, but I've gone back to traditional slow cooking if I want that deep flavor. Also, the house smells so much better!
• bostik 5y ago
  > Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is a must Yeah, my read from the article was that someone had found McGee's tome and grabbed the section on meat cooking. For a simpler and less heavy reading, Cooking for Geeks is a surprisingly good starting point. (I love On Food and Cooking but it's as much a scientific reference as it's a food preparation guide.)
• chongli 5y ago
  Most slow cooker recipes are adapted from (and/or can be adapted to) Dutch oven recipes. Cooking the same recipe using the latter, in the oven on low heat with the Dutch oven lid slightly ajar, will produce a much more flavourful dish thanks to the Maillard reaction and all of the delicious browning that takes place on the top. It’s something I recommend to anyone who enjoys braised dishes.
  • damontal 5y ago
    Dutch ovens are great for baking bread too. They trap moisture in so you get a really nice crust vs just baking it in the open oven
    • brigandish 5y ago
      Of course, if you don't have that or a steam capable oven, just pop the kettle on and put a tray of boiled water in the bottom of the oven and you'll get the same effect.
      • dredmorbius 5y ago
        Suggestions: - Use an old tray, or a cheap one, that you don't mind getting beat to crap. Baking heat + water are very hard on trays. - Also hard on the bottom of many ovens. - Don't use glass. It will very likely shatter either when adding water or due to oven heat. Ceramic likewise. - Iron will rust. Stainless-steel or aluminium are your best bets. When removing the tray (at the end of the oven-spring bake), realise that you have an extremely hot tray full of boiling water. If you guage things right, you'll have very nearly completely boiled off the water.
• monroewalker 5y ago
  Where do you get your recipes!? I've had an instant pot for a while but never ended up using it much.
  • g8oz 5y ago
    https://myheartbeets.com/ https://myheartbeets.com/ is a great resource for Instant Pot recipes.