Crockpot Pizza (Slow Cooker) Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Does size of crockpot affect cooking time? ›

When troubleshooting a meal-gone-wrong, often our first question is “How big is your slow cooker?” The size of your crockpot can affect the outcome of your meal. If your crockpot is smaller than what we recommend, you may need to cook your meal a little longer.

Just plug in your slow cooker, add your chosen recipe's ingredients, set the cooker to low or high, depending on the recipe's instructions, add the lid and let it cook. Once your dish is done cooking, you can either switch the slow cooker off to turn off the heating element, or warm if you're not ready to enjoy it yet.

Take the lid off

Place the cooker on a high setting, and open the lid for 30-45 minutes to let excess moisture cook off. The liquid will reduce, leaving you with a thick and delicious gravy or sauce. (Tip: This trick can also be applied for thickening stews, or when you've accidentally added too much liquid.)

A cornstarch slurry is a mixture of a cold liquid with cornstarch. It is used as a thickening agent, and is particularly common in Asian sauces. As a rule of thumb, dissolve 2 parts cold water and 1 part cornstarch. Add the slurry to your sauce as it simmers in the slow cooker.

Most slow cooker meals take 8-12 hours on low or 4-6 hours on high, but there are also recipes for slow-cooked meat that take up to 24 hours. If you want to avoid overcooking your dish, follow the given guidelines as closely as possible.

A general rule of thumb from Luis Sanchez, senior category manager for the appliance manufacturer Breville: To go from "High" to "Low" (or vice versa), multiply (or divide) the original time by 1.5 to 2.5 hours. And as with the cooking times for specific ingredients, these times are approximate.

Yes, you can add raw steak to a slow cooker to cook it to your desired doneness level. Slow cooking steak is a convenient way to cook steak over several hours, tenderizing it and adding exceptional flavor along the way.

Most slow cookers have two slow cooker temperature settings. The 'Low' cook setting reaches temperatures between 164-182°F (reaching a peak of around 205°F after 4 hours). Wondering what temperature is 'High' on a Crockpot slow cooker? The 'High' cook setting tops off at around 205°F after cooking for 4 hours.

On some occasions, you'll want to leave food in the slow cooker to keep warm, during Thanksgiving or Christmas Dinner, for example, or any other event or holiday. While it's perfectly ok to use your crock pot in this way, try to avoid leaving food on the warming setting for more than four hours.

Why put foil under the lid of a slow cooker? ›

The heat bounces off from the lid and allows your food to cook faster. Also, you will not lose any of the steam that usually evaporates.

This moist environment allows you to leave food to cook for hours without risking it drying out. But because there is no evaporation, the liquid isn't able to reduce and thicken naturally in a slow cooker, often resulting in watery sauces and loose gravies.

Make a blonde roux, flour and fat cooked together into a paste, add the liquid and whisk it in. There. That's gravy. Alternatively pour the liquid into a pot on the stove and set it to simmer for a long time, reducing it down until it's thicker.

You can roll meat in a small amount of seasoned flour before adding it to the slow cooker or use a little cornflour at the end. If you want to do the latter, take a teaspoon or two of cornflour and mix it to a paste with a little cold water. Stir into your simmering slow cooker contents, then replace the lid.

Use Flour and Water

Combine 2 tablespoons flour with every 1/4 cup cold water and whisk until smooth. Add the mixture to your sauce over medium heat, and continue to stir and cook until you've reached your desired consistency.

A 5- or 6-quart slow cooker is the most versatile option.

It can be used for everything from dinners to meal prep and more. If you use your slow cooker a lot, you might find it worthwhile to buy both a large and small slow cooker, because the size of the slow cooker called for in a recipe does matter.

If you're working with a big slow cooker and prefer not to scale a recipe up, an oven-safe baking dish provides an easy work-around. Add the recipe ingredients to the baking dish, sized so it's two-third to three-quarters full, then place the dish inside the bowl of the slow cooker.

As a general guide, a 1.5 to 2.3-litre capacity is great for two people, a larger 4 to 4.5 litres will feed four, and 5.5 to 7 litres is ideal for four to six people.