Reporting back on the crock pot

A week or two ago, I mentioned the crock pot we had got for Christmas. As we have been away quite a bit lately, we have only used it a few times. However, we have made two batches of chilli in it. The first time, I used a recipe which didn't involve browning the meat or onions before adding to the pot, and in which the crock pot was left on the low setting for eight hours. The result was edible, but rather insipid in taste and appearance, and generally rather disappointing.

The second time, Jian browned the meat and onions first, started off the cooking on high for half an hour, in the interests of speeding up the cooking time, as well as improving the flavour, and then turned it down to low for several hours. This worked really well, and smelt delicious as it was cooking, which was nice for me, as I was working from home that day.

The only other recipe we have tried is a 'pulled pork' recipe - not something I'd tried before - which we found on the internet. This involved no pre-cooking, but the meat and vegetables were cooked on high for the whole cooking time, for four hours or so. This was also very good, though a slightly longer cooking time would have made it even better.

In summary, so far the crock pot seems worth having, although it is another gadget to store...