The Slow Cook Book by Heather Whinney

The Slow Cook Book features recipes for both slow cookers and more traditional slow cooking methods. There are recipes for soups, stews, casseroles, curries, chilis, pot roasts, and even a few desserts.

This is a really good cookbook. I don't use my slow cooker as much as I should, but this book has encouraged me to use it more often. I love that there are so many delicious sounding recipes to try. I made a number of them so far and each of them has turned out pretty good.

The book starts off with an introductory section that includes: types of cooking, pantry essentials, choosing ingredients, and some cooking techniques. I particularly like the photos in this section.

The next section is called "Recipe Choosers". It sort of neat, but I'm not sure how useful it's going to be. Along with the recipe titles, there are photographs, page numbers, and cooking times sorted by the main protein used. However, this section doesn't have include all of the recipes in the book. I'm confused as to why the author chose to highlight these, but not others. Also, some of this information is already presented in the index, albeit, not as beautifully. Oh, well. It's pretty to look at.

On to the recipes. Each of them features: the number of servings, the recommended maximum freeze time (if applicable), instructions, prep time, and cooking time for both slow cookers and traditional slow cooking methods. Some of the recipes have photographs of the finished dish, however, sadly, many of the recipes don't.

Speaking of photographs, the ones in this book are quite nice. Not ultra-contemporary mind you, but mouth-watering, nevertheless. It's odd, though, that there's only one photograph of a slow cooker. And there's no food in it. All of the other photos (for cooking techniques and for presenting the dishes) are either on plates, bowls, pots, or dutch ovens. I just find that a bit strange for a book about cooking in a slow cooker.

The instructions are laid out nicely and quite easy to follow. There are a number of recipes that have been labelled "healthy". However, I couldn't find anything to tell me the criteria for this designation. Are they low fat? High fibre? High protein? That would be nice to know.

The book also contains a table of contents and index.

Recommended. If you use your slow cooker all the time, you'll find some new interesting recipes to try. If you don't use your slow cooker a lot, this book will likely inspire you to dig it out and plug it in.

For more information about this book, please visit Amazon's website.

I'd like to thank Chris at DK Canada for this review copy.

The Slow Cook Book by Heather Whinney, Dorling Kindersley (DK), ©2013. ISBN 9781553632191(Soft cover), 352p.