When life gets frantic, a slow-cooked meal might just be the best kind of "fast food" you can eat to nourish your soul.
“I feel like everything in life now is so fast-paced,” says , a slow-cooker and cookbook author. “It’s like we're always rushing to the next thing and have a ‘go-go-go’ mentality.
“There are a lot of meals that we make in a hurry, like 15-minute dishes for dinner. But cooking and eating should be all about feeling calm. When you come home from work and there’s a slow-cooked healthy meal that’s ready to eat, it just feels so nourishing. There’s really nothing else like it.”
Slow cooking is a way of cooking food slowly on low heat – 140 degrees Celsius or lower – over a long period of time (most commonly four-to-eight hours). Although today, the process of slow cooking has been made a lot easier through the development of the electric slow cooker machine, slow cooking is a method that’s as old as fire.
You can slow cook in the oven, on an outdoor fire, or in a Dutch oven/crock-pot/ casserole dish on the stove. You just need to have a cooking container that’s heat resistant with a tight-fitting lid that can easily contain heat and steam for many hours.
“Slow cooking as a very fundamental and ancient form of cooking. If you look at cuisines from around the world, I can't think of one that doesn't have slow cooking as part of its core offering.”
There was a lot of like secondary cuts of meat – very fatty bits and bones that would never be thrown out. That would all be slow cooked down to retain nutrients but extract the flavour from the meat. It always tasted beautiful.
These days, slow cooking is still done in a tagine throughout the Middle East and northern Africa. In India, many chickpeas and curries are regularly slow-cooked and over in Europe, beef Bourguignon, Irish stew and Hungarian goulash can all be slow-cooked authentically.
Alexandra, who has Latvian heritage, adds that it’s always been common for meat and potatoes to be slow-cooked in a stock-based sauce.
“My [Latvian] grandparents didn’t have a slow cooker, per se,” she says. “But the concept of slow cooking was incredibly prevalent in our culture. There were a lot of secondary cuts of meat – very fatty bits and bones that would never be thrown out. That would all be slow-cooked down to retain nutrients but extract the flavour from the meat.. It always tasted beautiful.”
Why bother going low & slow?
So why bother to slow-cook a meal when you can get dinner made under the grill or in a frypan, and on the table in 15 minutes?
According to the slow-cooking food can help you to save money as you often use cheaper cuts of meat (brisket, pork shoulder, lamb shoulder and chicken thighs). Electric slow cookers use less energy than an oven and can be used all year round with seasonal ingredients.
Slow cooking may also help preserve nutrients and flavours. The method of heat transfer that occurs during the slow cook results in simmering ingredients. As the food cooks, steam gets released. The lid traps and converts the rising steam into condensation, before it returns to the bottom of the pot. have shown that the process of is a more effective method of retaining nutrients during cooking compared to boiling or stir-frying.
“A slow cooker doesn’t burn off nutrients or let flavours evaporate,” says Alexandra.” Everything you put in the slow cooker stays in the slow cooker – nothing is wasted during cooking, including the nutrients contained in each ingredient.”
Beyond the differences in heat and time, slow cooking differs from boiling in one major way. “With normal boiling, if you cook the vegetables over a long period of time some nutrients will be lost,” says public health nutritionist, Charlotte Morrison, online for .
“But with slow cooking, you’re tending to make stews, casseroles, soups and curries – dishes that you eat with the juices or the sauce they cook in. That’s where the vitamins and minerals from the vegetables have gone during the cooking process, so you will be more likely to get those as long as you’re eating all of what’s in the pot.”
If I put some food on the slow cooker in the morning, I can walk in the door at night and be eating three minutes later.
Ease the cooking stress
As Alexandra explains, slow cooking can also help reduce household stress. "You can do fancy dishes in the slow cooker. But for the most part, you just stand there, take your chops and veggies and throw them in."
To slow-cook a meal, all you have to do is pick a less busy time of day/night. Prepare the ingredients and put them all in a slow-cooking container, then forget about the process of cooking for a few hours. Once the timer goes, viola: you’ve got yourself a hearty stew, soup or casserole without the worry.
According to Alexandra, slow-cooked food usually feels like an emotional hug in a bowl. “Slow cooking just allows you to experience food and life at a much calmer pace, which is great for your mental health and stress levels. If I put some food in the slow cooker in the morning, I can walk in the door at night and be eating three minutes later.
“The stress surrounding cooking gets toned down. Slow-cooked meals are the ultimate fast food.”
