Slow Cooker Meat Loaf

We wanted to see if a meat loaf could be made in the slow cooker.  Deciding to have a go with things we had in the house, we made use of a pack of sausagemeat (ours was from Marks and Spencer because it was gluten free), an egg, a tablespoon of gluten free Worcestershire sauce, some unsmoked streaky bacon, one chopped red onion and half a red pepper, also chopped.

Whilst the slow cooker was switched onto HIGH, to warm through, the egg and Worcestershire Sauce was mixed together.

This egg mix was then added to the sausagemeat, peppers and onions.

The meat mix was then combined thoroughly - we used a fork, but by hand would be best.

Once the slow cooker had warmed through (this took ours about 10 minutes) the crock was lined with half of the bacon rashers to form a base layer.

On top of the bacon layer, we placed the sausagemeat mix and patted it down, before layering the remaining bacon rashers on the top.

The slow cooker was left on high for about an hour, then turned to low (ours only has 2 settings) and left for about 5 hours.  At this point, we carefully turned it out of the crock and placed it on a baking sheet leaving behind the cooking juices.









It was then placed under a hot grill.....

... and this is what it looked like after about 5 minutes crisping up.

We sliced the meat loaf and served it with mixed root mash and peas.

Slow Cooker Jacket Potatoes

 One of Sous Chef J's favourite meals is jacket potatoes and we wondered whether we could use our slow cooker to make them... so we gave it a try.

First of all, we placed a little scrunched up tin foil in the base of the cooker then arranged six mid sized potatoes around the slow cooker.  The lid was placed on (it needs to be a snug fit to stop water/heat escaping.)

The cooker was set to high... and, as we needed the potatoes for lunchtime, we left them on high for about four hours and they were done.

This is what the cooker looked like at during cooking... you can see that there is quite a lot of moisture inside the cooker. Some has also escaped out.



Here is what the potatoes looked like after cooking.  They are moist and soft.  The points where the potatoes touched the ceramic pot were crisp.

The pot was switched off at this stage and care was taken removing the potatoes as they are hot and very soft.  We found some tongs worked well.

A good amount of butter and some freshly ground black pepper were added and our meal was ready.

We have tried this when going out for the afternoon - starting the cooking off on high for about an hour and then reducing to low for the remainder of the cooking time.  We find 4-5 hours will cook the potatoes through but, obviously, that depends on their size and also the power of the cooker.  Ours is a very basic, 3 litre cooker with settings labelled as High, Low and Warm.