The slow cooker, or crockpot, makes cooking life so much easier. All you need is a couple of tasty recipes and the right ingredients, then voila – you can make an amazing dish even if you had only 15 minutes to spare. But if you’re getting tired of your usual dishes, the Internet is your big library to look for fresh and new recipe ideas. You’ll be able to bring the best results in your chosen recipes if you have the best slow cookers in your own kitchens. Only the top rated slow cookers will enable you to cook a variety of dishes anytime.
There are slow cooker reviews that feature the users’ own recipes, and you would want to check them out and try them. But to make it easier for you, we list the popular best slow cooking recipe sites to check out.
1. Get Crocked
This site was founded by Jenn Bare, the official brand ambassador for Crock-Pot branded slow cookers. She hosts a weekly segment for “Mom Monday” on ABC-15 in Phoenix and authored an e-book entitled Get Crocked: The Definitive Guide to Slow Cooking. Her recipes on her blog is for busy wives and mothers who enjoys spending time with her family instead of slaving away in the kitchen. She says her blog is the leading resource for slow cooking, with an online following base of over 1.5 million.
Her recipes come with matching photos and are fantastically categorized from appetizers, breakfast, desserts, main course, soups, vegetarian dishes and drinks, and even recipes for the health-conscious and paleo dieters. There’s even a nutrition facts table included in each of them.
2. 365 Days of Slow Cooking
In 2009, Karen Bellessa Petersen started this blog with the goal of creating and sharing 365 recipes in 365 days. She was able to accomplish that without repeating any recipe. Amazing, right? She tried everything from sides, appetizers, main dishes, desserts, breads and more. After finishing her project, she landed on many media appearances. She also published her three cookbooks: 365 Days of Slow Cooking, Slow-Cooking Fast! and 100 Days of Slow Cooker Summer, as well as an e-book, From Freezer to Crock to Table.
Karen still constantly updates her website with new slow cooker recipes that are easy, tasty and budget friendly, and in the same time, practical and functional. She does not only list the ingredients and procedures – she shares her personal experience cooking it – sometimes giving tips on what slow cooker to use best, and what brand of meat and other ingredients to use so that you can achieve the desired texture and flavor.
3. A Year of Slow Cooking
This is one of the blogs of Stephani O’Dea, a prominent food writer, blogger and author best known for her obsession for slow cooking. She made a New Year’s Resolution to use her slow cooker every single day in 2008 and write about it on her blog. This idea resulted in a highly-visited website, which pushed her to start several books about slow cooking, including 365 Slow Cooker Suppers, Five Ingredients or Less Slow Cooker Cookbook, and the one that stayed on The New York Times best-seller list for six weeks, Make It Fast, Cook It Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking.
Her website covers a lot of topics about slow cookers, but you can find all her recipes – which are over a thousand – categorized here (http://www.ayearofslowcooking.com/2005/01/table-of-contents-year-of-slow-cooking.html). Besides the usual ingredients and instructions, she gives her own honest verdict (sometimes given by her family), and she sees to it that you can make it gluten-free, since her family has an allergy to it.
4. A Busy Mom’s Slow Cooker Adventures
As the blog title suggests, this site serves as a record of the slow cooking adventures of a working mother, Hope Comerford. She was incredibly busy, and when she got frustrated for the lack of the time to spend with her daughter, she pulled out her trusty old slow cooker to do the dinner cooking for her. It happened in 2010. She even had leftovers to pack for lunch every next day. Her co-teachers would recognize her meal and ask for her recipes, until one day she decided to start typing them on her blog. She never imagined that her site would become popular as it has become now.
Hope has listed and categorized her recipes in an index. She gives her useful tips and side-stories that can make a recipe interesting. When she discovered that she was gluten-intolerant in 2013, she also created gluten-free recipes, which also turned into a cookbook entitled, The Gluten-Free Slow Cooker. In 2016, she also became an author and a brand ambassador for the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbooks, having written the titles Lazy and Slow, Healthy Slow Cooker Cookbook, Favorite Slow Cooker Recipes for Mom and Favorite Slow Cooker Recipes for Dad. Go ahead and join her in her adventures!
5. The Magical Slow Cooker
Sarah Olson, an ex-mail carrier and now a full-time mom and cookbook writer, started this website in 2013. Without realizing it at first, she figured out that the mornings she is stoked to wake up and jump out of bed are the mornings she had a new slow cooker meal planned. She makes about 3 to 4 slow cooker meals a week, and she updates her site regularly.
Her recipes are complete from breakfast to dinner, party foods from camping foods, sides to desserts and drinks – all made using her trusted slow cooker. Each recipe is made with effort and love, as you would see her beautiful photos and artsy videos along with the ingredient list and instructions. You can also check out her cookbook, which was released in 2015, also entitled The Magical Slow Cooker.
6. Crock-Pot Ladies
Another amazing Crock-Pot recipe site, the Crock-Pot Ladies gets you all the yummy recipes you can quickly and easily make with your Crock-Pot – of course. This site contains ideas from three different moms (Heidi Kennedy, Katie Zaborac and Sarah Ince) who are all from small towns in different states (Wyoming, Kansas and Illinois).
The Crock-Pot Ladies’ recipes are neatly categorized to types, such as beverages, appetizers, breakfast, breads, desserts, entrees, sauces, side dishes and more. They are also considerate enough to make all their recipes friendly and hearty for those in special diets. For every recipe, the ladies fill them with insights and tips, as well as a nutrition facts table. If you’re in a special diet regimen, it would be easy to know if a specific recipe is good for you with the “special diets” tags under each of them. Check this site out if you’re into healthier slow cooker food options!
7. Crock Pot Guys
All the previous sites on this list are curated and updated by ladies. Well, this recipe site proves guys are also in awe of the wonders a Crock-Pot can do. They say they want their readers to rock their crock. Their rules are simple: eat, drink, laugh and live. If you wish your man would cook for you and spend more time with you, ask him to visit this blog.
In this site, you can find recipes that are easy, fun and incredibly delicious. They also categorized recipes neatly into meals, main ingredients and type of cuisine (American, Italian and Mexican). If you’d like to go cook a dish using their instructions, you can also rate their recipes and comment after to help other readers who would like to follow suit.