Brilliant Catyl! And mouthwatering!

I love using the slow cooker and it comes into its own in the winter.... especially when the family are all home and they go off clubbing with their friends , it is then that I make sure I put it on ready for their retern in the early/not so early hours of the morning .
A hot meal after a hard nights dancing in the clubs is alays appreciated , but the draw back is that the friends also love this as well and come along for some hot food on their way home so the house sometimes gets a bit noisy !

I have never put much liquid into the slow cooker unless I was heating a pot of soup ( useful to do this at Christmas time when space on the hob is limited !)

Like cooking with a tagine, any fluid that evaporates from the cooking food gets caught and condenses back into the pot . This is why I add not much liquid when cooking in the slow cooker , I definatly do not cover the meat or what ever else is cooking with fluid.

I am not good at following recipes dispite having hundreds of cook books that I read and this is partly why I nver put much fluid into the slowcooker.

When my darling uses the slow cooker he adds ore fluid than I do and then he removes the liquid to thicken it in a pan on the stove top. I never do that , if I want the juices to thicken I simply dust the meat being used with plain flour after I have browned it but before I add it to the slow cooker.

Another use for the slow cooker is to cook the christmas pudding .
I had a freind who used to do this and it works very well.

My show cooker has a rack that fits in the base of the dish , this allows meat to be 'roasted' or potatoes to be 'baked ' . I have never tried this but ought to give it a try smetime I think.