Is There Life Without a Crockpot?

Categories: Cookbooks

 Now that the weather has cooled off, it's time for slow-cooked winter cooking, and I don't mean crockpot cooking, either!   You can achieve marvelous effects with oven braising.  Check out All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking by Molly Stevens. 

Classic dishes like osso buco, pot roast and sauerbraten are all braised, a technique that is best described as a combination of roasting and stewing that yields wonderful smells in your kitchen as well as succulent, falling-off-the bone cuts of meat. And the leftovers are even better.

This is a thorough discussion of braising from what pots work best with which cuts of meat to an overview of the whole process before you even start exploring recipes.

And what recipes!  Most of the time, when you talk about braising, you think about meat, like a pork shoulder or a tough hunk of beef, both of which are ideal candidates for this technique, but Stevens takes you to the world of braised vegetables before you even get to the meats.

Her recipe for braised cabbage is great, and leftovers combined with chicken stock and a can of navy beans make a fast and tasty soup.  Escarole, potatoes, eggplant, green beans, and even radishes are some of the vegetables she offers for braising.

When you get to the meat recipes, the classics like coq au vin, pork loin braised in milk(popularized by Marcella Hazen), and lamb shanks are there but that's just the beginng as Stevens goes on to braise chicken eighteen different ways and even treats fish and squid to braising.  But there are some new twists to the tried and true recipes as well as some recipes that are outright exotic sounding like Braised Rabbit with Roasted Red Peppers and Merguez Sausage.

Beginning cooks will find this book extremely informative as Stevens is very precise with step-by-step instructions  and explanations.  More experienced cooks will just like the recipes and the results.

If I sound enthused, that's because I am.  This is currently one of my favorite cookbooks (those of you who rotate back and forth from one old favorite to another know what I mean).  I use it all the time, even in summer for some of the vegetable recipes, and I haven't made one recipe from this book that wasn't good. You don't need fancy equipment, and if you do swear by your crockpot,  you can probably adapt most of these recipes to a slowcooker without much fuss. So drag out your Dutch oven and get to it.  Your kitchen will smell fantastic and you will eat pretty darn well.