‘WHAT my mother believed about cooking,” Nora Ephron once wrote, “is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.”
Well, yes. Why else would we live in New York, where refrigerators house mainly booze and ketchup and stoves double as sweater storage?
Problem is, nobody seems to be prospering at the moment, no matter how hard we work. And so we have been forced to do the unthinkable. We have been forced to fix dinner at home.
Fellow kitchen-phobes, we have two words for you: crock pot.
Sure, you can call it by its modernized name, the slow cooker, but we all know we’re talking about the frumpy appliance that used to come mainly in shades of avocado and burnt umber.
“It’s like having a little June Cleaver at home waiting for you with a warm meal!” says Tara Cox, an editor at Popular Mechanics magazine, who’s an early adopter of the retro-frugality trend. Even her slow cooker is thrifty (and hip) – she got it for $25 at Target.
Downtown comic and “Arrested Development” star David Cross recently raved to The Post about his slow cooker, calling it
“f – – – ing amazing … I just dump a bunch of meat and vegetables into the thing and turn on a switch and leave.”
It’s the hands-off factor that really sells the idea to many urbanites. “I love the idea of being able to leave when something is cooking,” says musician Chris Johnson, who plays in the Red Hook Ramblers and the children’s band the Deedle Deedle Dees. He’s been crock-potting since Christmas, focusing mainly on chili.
Actors are warming up to the crock pot, too. Jenna Fischer – a k a Pam Beesly from “The Office” – blogged about her love of the slow cooker last year, and recently gushed to Self magazine that the appliance is even good for her sex life: “My boyfriend adored it,” she said.
“We had more time to spend together that evening. Since we didn’t have to cook, it left time for hanky-panky!”
Even with the booty bonus, though, the idea of venturing into the kitchen can be intimidating.
So start simple. We like the cookbook “3-Ingredient Slow Cooker Recipes: 200 Recipes for Memorable Meals,” by Suzanne Bonet. Aside from ridiculously common staple spices like salt and pepper, these meals seriously consist of three items only. No dashes of cumin here; no zested lemons. Just meat, veggies and sometimes (OK, often) a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup.
We’re fond of Quickie Barbecued Chicken: Buy chicken, barbecue sauce and an onion. Put in the chicken, put in the sauce, slice the onion and throw that in, too. Turn on the pot. Leave.
Stephanie O’Dea, of San Francisco, was at a similarly remedial level a year ago.
“I didn’t know how to cook,” she says.
“And we needed to eat.”
So she resolved to use her slow cooker every day for a year. The result is her blog, A Year of Crockpotting, which will be released this spring in book form from Hyperion.
“In January, I was really just opening cans and throwing stuff in and holding my breath,” she says. “But then I got adventurous.”
In all, she cooked 366 recipes. “15 of them were total flops,” she says, “in that they just didn’t work in the crock pot. Bacon-wrapped scallops, for example, don’t work in a crock pot.”
Another word of slow-cooker caution comes from Matt Timms, host of the upcoming Chili Takedown in Brooklyn at Williamsburg’s Union Pool on Sunday at 5. “You’ve got to watch the chicken – it gets dry,” he says. “So make sure
there&# of meat.
Drain and rinse the beans.
Add the entire contents of the corn and tomato cans.
Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-5. I think the longer you cook soup, the better, so if you have the time, opt for cooking on low.
Serve with a handful of shredded cheese and a dollop of sour cream.
CROCK POT COOKING TIPS
* Always spray pot with cooking spray before using.
* Pot should ideally be half to three-quarters full.
* No peeking, especially when on low setting – it releases too much heat.
* One hour on high setting is equal to two hours on low.
* Tender veggies like mushrooms and zucchini should ideally be added in the last hour so they don’t overcook.
* Dairy products and seafood should also be added in the last hour.
* Root veggies take longer to cook, so put them on the bottom under the meat.
Safety tips: It’s all clear for the crock
FOR the crock-pot newcomer, it can be slightly unnerving to leave food cooking all day in your empty,
flammable apartment. So we sought advice from an expert: Matt Timms, who produces food events around the city – look for his contests at chili-takedown.com – is a man who knows his way around a crock pot.
“They don’t pull very much electricity,” he assures us. “It’s like leaving a light on all day. And possibly not even that. It just warms the food.”
Just to be double sure, we got a very official all-clear from Lt. Anthony Mancuso, New York’s director of fire safety education. “There’s no problem with those items,” he says. “The main thing is, it should be a UL [Underwriters Laboratories]-approved product. Sometimes it’s a label, or it could be printed into the base.”
Mancuso also recommends making sure your crock pot is the only thing plugged into its socket, and that you’re not using it with an extension cord.