Your “Cool” Summer Tool
Slow cookers keep summer kitchens cool with delicious everyday dishes and celebration feasts.
Hu
“How long?”
Decades ago, my (then) pre-teen son expressed shock when he discovered that his Boomer mother had grown up in a house with no air conditioning until she was in junior high school.
“No way,” he had responded with tense body language, revealing his deep “freak out” imagining summer without central air, or at least a window AC unit.
“How did you survive?” he asked with a grimace.
I explained, using this old scrapbook photo as a visual aid.
“We spent a lot of time outdoors. Daddy filled our plastic “kiddie pool” daily. Mom and Dad scheduled errands and chores during the mornings, when it was cooler. When it wasn’t raining, we ate meals outdoors on our redwood picnic table…under the shade of enormous trees.”
Growing up with our mother’s frequent reminders to always stay alert for “blessings in disguise,” we learned deep appreciation for breezes.
Today, in what feels like a full-circle holiday moment, our meal will come together without air conditioning in my breezy apartment within walking distance to the Pacific Ocean. After preparing this family turkey breast slow cooker favorite for years, I recently revised my original recipe. Now I suggest cooking the breast completely on high power to retain moisture.
Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to summer’s unofficial launch…planning our Memorial Day celebration with deep gratitude for ancestors smiling down.
“Life is But A Moving Stream Between A Memory And A Dream”
—Ariel Williams Holloway
Slow Cooker Turkey Breast
4 or more trimmed celery ribs
1 yellow onion, peeled, halved
1 green bell pepper, trimmed, seeded, halved
1 or 2 lemons, halved, seeded
1/2 bone-in, skin-on turkey breast, about 2 1/2 to 3 pounds
1 tablespoon Creole-style seasoning blend, see recipe
Freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
Line a slow cooker with celery ribs. Arrange the halved onion, green pepper and lemon around and over the celery. Top with the turkey breast half. Season with Creole seasoning blend, salt and ground black pepper. Pour chicken broth over the breast, lemon and vegetables. Cover.
Cook on high about 4 hours, until an inserted instant-read thermometer registers 165 degrees F. If desired, transfer to a foil-lined baking sheet and broil about 2 minutes, or as needed to lightly brown skin. Makes four servings, including light sandwich leftovers.
Sources:
Skillet Diary Library:
The Crockery Pot Cookbook by Lou Seibert Pappas (Nitty Gritty Productions, 1975)
“Once you have used a crockery-lined, slow electric cooker it is easy to understand why they are so popular. It's like having a "genie" at home cooking while you're away.”
—Lou Seibert Pappas
Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook by Phyllis Pellman Good (Good Books, 2000)
“Slow Cookers prefer cheap cuts of meat. Tell that to your favorite graduate student, or newly independent young adult, or to the parents of a growing brood.”
—Phyllis Pellman Good
The Gourmet Slow Cooker by Lynn Alley (Ten Speed Press, 2003)
“In our own kitchens, we have the opportunity to continue a long-standing tradition of creative one-pot meals, cooked in our own ceramic casserole. It may no longer be fueled by fire, but hopefully the ingredients are still prepared with care, concern, and the intent to nourish the body and give pleasure to the senses.”
—Lynn Alley
Slow-Cooked Comfort by Lydie Marshall (William Morrow, 2005)
"Nothing is more wonderful than to come into a kitchen where there is a pot on the stove or in the oven, with a stew cooking away for several hours!"
— Lydie Marshall
Secrets of Slow Cooking by Liana Krissoff (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2005)
“Lifting the Lid: The thing about using a slow cooker is that you don't have to watch the pot or stir or otherwise disturb the ingredients. But that doesn't mean you mustn't do all that. Go ahead and lift the lid-part of cooking is seeing whats going on in the pot, tasting it, adding ingredients. Sure, heat is lost, and for most dishes you should keep the lid on as much as possible, but l’ve found that the food comes back up to temperature fairly quickly after the lid has been briefly removed. So don't worry too much about it.”
—Liana Krissoff
The Indian Slow Cooker by Anupy Singla (Surrey Books, 2010)
“There are hundreds of Indian cookbooks out there and even more books on slow cooking. But never has one put the two concepts together—until now.”
—Anupy Singla
Slow Cooker Revolution edited by by America’s Test Kitchen (America’s Test Kitchen, 2013)
“We turned to convenience products when other ingredients either did not work in the slow cooker or simply took too much time…When it came to making a creamy sauce for some pasta dishes (like macaroni and cheese and penne with chicken), we found that condensed cheese soup or jarred Alfredo sauce was the only route to a sauce that would not break in the slow cooker.”
—America’s Test Kitchen
Ariel Williams Holloway, Mobile, Alabama (Aunt Ariel)
Shape Them Into Dreams by Ariel Williams Holloway (Exposition Press, New York, 1955)