Slow Cooked: 200 exciting, new recipes for your slow cooker Read Online Free PDF Page A

crock, sprinkle the flour over it and stir well to evenly coat all the meat. Season.
    Make sure your beef stock is heated. I tend to use Bovril here made with boiling water (1 teaspoon Bovril to 200ml boiling water), but if you are using fresh, warm it through. Add the Worcestershire sauce, tomato purée, soy and gravy browning and mix it all to combine.
    Pour this stock mixture over the mince and stir it well. Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook on low for 8 hours. The mince will thicken and create a rich gravy. It may look like it has separated slightly, but all it needs is a good stir and it’s ready to serve.
    Note: If the idea appeals to you, simply make some suet dumplings by mixing 100g self-raising flour with 50g beef suet, a pinch of salt, pepper and mustard powder and 60ml cold water to make a thick, stiff dough. Bring together and roll into eight dumplings. Add them to the mince (or a stew) at least an hour before the end of cooking and enjoy!

TONGUE AND CHEEK PUDDING
    I used to be wary of offal. Put off by the very nature of it, I’d also had it overcooked a few times and disliked the grainy texture it develops that way. The only offal I really loved when I was a kid was tongue and then, when I became vegetarian, I was squeamish about all the wobbly bits of the animal. When I started eating meat again, I was convinced I wouldn’t like offal and so never learned to cook it.
    Slightly unsure of what to write about when we started blogging, I decided to start trying offal again because even if I didn’t like it, it would be something to write about. My tastes, and a lot of cooking in Britain, have come on in the last 20 years and much of the offal I tried was delicious.
    Mister North has never been afraid of offal and helped encourage me by telling me all kinds of things were black pudding and now I’m obsessed. Sadly, offal is often too delicate for the slow cooker, but Mister North created this dish, which works perfectly and reintroduced me to tongue.
    I am lucky to have a farmers’ market near me on a Sunday and in amongst the stalls, there are a couple of butchers that stock an unusual selection of meats that are perfect for experimenting. I’ve ordered both pork and veal tongues there for a few pounds. A whole ox tongue is too big here. If you can’t get either tongue or cheeks, then simply use the same amounts of steak and kidney instead.
    SERVES 6
    2 pigs’ tongues
    4 pigs’ cheeks
    100ml red wine
    200g black pudding
    1 heaped teaspoon paprika
    1 onion, finely chopped
    400ml hot chicken stock
    2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
    2 bay leaves
    1 heaped teaspoon cornflour (optional, for thickening)
    100g suet
    200g self-raising flour
    75–150ml cold water
    salt and pepper
    Wipe the tongues down and brown them on each side in a frying pan over a medium heat. I usually do them one at a time. Set them into the slow cooker. Seal the pigs’ cheeks in the same pan and add to the slow cooker. Deglaze the pan with the red wine and pour over the tongue and cheeks.
    Slice open the skin of the black pudding and crumble the contents over the meat. Add the paprika and onion and season well. Pour in the chicken stock so that the tongues are nearly submerged. Add the Worcestershire sauce and the bay leaves.
    Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the meat on low for 8–9 hours. I usually do mine overnight so that I awake to a lovely smell in the morning. Lift the meat out of the gravy that has formed and set aside to cool.
    The black pudding should have melted into the stock to create a thick gravy, but if it seems too liquid, mix the cornflour with a tiny amount of water, mix it into the sauce and cook for another hour in the slow cooker or simmer over a medium heat in a large saucepan for about 10 minutes.
    Turn your attention to the cooled meats. Pull the cheeks apart with two forks into strands of tender pork. Peel the skin off the tongues gently and slice or shred the meat inside. This is much easier when