Classic slow recipes for the slow cooker enthusiast. Slow cooker books by Judith Finlayson enjoy solid sales year after year. This success is based on the author's innovative and delicious recipes, along with the immense popularity of slow cookers. Thousands of home chefs have discovered the great taste and convenience of food prepared in the slow cooker. They've also learned that this handy appliance is perfect for an extraordinary range of dishes not associated with a slow cooker. This collection of classic slow cooker recipes selected from the author's previous books is perfect for anyone brand new to slow cookers. With outstanding full-color photographs throughout, this competitively priced cookbook meets the needs of a significant market segment. From soups to main courses and desserts, these recipes are easy to make and sure to please. Recipes suitable for vegetarians and vegans are clearly identified. Some of the tasty recipes are: Fennel-scented tomato and wild rice soup; southwestern turkey chowder; mushroom lentil soup - Chicken and barley bake; barley jambalaya; beef stew with rye berries, sauerkraut and dill - Savory short ribs; French country chicken with olives; easy vegetable chili; peppery peas with sweet potato - Caribbean fish stew; Greek-style beef with eggplant; tagine of squash and chickpeas with mushrooms; not your granny's pork and beans - Blackberry peach cobbler; plum pudding; Irish chocolate tapioca pudding; classic flan. Extensive tips and techniques are included throughout to ensure outstanding results, while make ahead instructions enhance convenience. From everyday favorites to dishes for entertaining, these recipes will satisfy and delight everyone -- especially the person who prepared them ahead of time. Judith Finlayson is a food journalist and the author of ten previous cookbooks, including 150 Best Slow Cooker Recipes , 175 Essential Slow Cooker Classics , and The Healthy Slow Cooker . Excerpt Using Your Slow Cooker An Effective Time Manager In addition to producing great-tasting food, a slow cooker is an extremely effective time-management tool. Where appropriate, I've included Make Ahead instructions that explain how to prepare a substantial amount of a recipe prior to cooking it, which enables you to be in the kitchen when it fits your schedule. (Some dishes and ingredients can't be assembled ahead of time for food safety or quality reasons.) Once the ingredients have been assembled in the stoneware and the appliance is turned on, you can forget about it. The slow cooker performs unattended while you carry on with your workaday life. You can be away from the kitchen all day and return to a hot, delicious meal. Maximize Slow Cooker Convenience To get the most out of your slow cooker: Use Make Ahead instructions to partially prepare a dish up to 2 days prior to cooking. - Do any additional chopping and slicing the night before you intend to cook to keep work to a minimum when it is less convenient. - Cook a recipe overnight and refrigerate until ready to serve. A Low-Tech Appliance Slow cookers are amazingly low tech. The appliance usually consists of a metal casing and a stoneware insert with a tight-fitting lid. For convenience, you should be able to remove the insert from the metal casing. This makes it easier to clean and increases its versatility, not only as a vessel for refrigerating some dishes that have been prepared to the Make Ahead stage but also as a serving dish. The casing contains the heat source, electrical coil that usually surrounds the stoneware insert. These coils do their work on the energy it takes to power a lOO-watt light bulb. Because the slow cooker operates on such a small amount of energy, you can safely leave it turned on while you are away from home. However, if you've assembled the dish in the stoneware and refrigerated it overnight (appropriate for some dishes), do not turn the slow cooker on before dropping the stoneware into the casing. The dramatic temperature change could crack the stoneware. Slow Cooker Basics Slow cookers are generally round or oval in shape and range in size from 1 to 7 quarts. The small round ones are ideal for dips and fondues, as well as some soups, main courses and desserts. The larger sizes, usually oval in shape, are necessary to cook big-batch dishes and those that need to be cooked in a dish or pan that fits into the stoneware. Because I use my slow cookers a lot for entertaining, I feel there is a benefit to having two: a smaller (3- to 4-quart size) one, which is ideal for preparing dips, roasting nuts or making recipes with smaller yields, and a larger (6-quart) oval one, which I use most of the time to cook recipes with large yields as well as for those calling for a baking dish or pan, which is set inside the stoneware. Once you begin using your slow cooker, you will get a sense of what your own needs are. Some manufacturers sell a "slow cooker" that is actually a multi-cooker