Lean and lovin' it: Don catches up with the slow cooker revolution

Until recently, I had never used a slow cooker. It wasn't an appliance that ever grabbed my attention. Living in a one- or two-person household, getting home after work and making a hot dinner wasn't a challenge and I didn't feel I needed one in my lean kitchen. If I wanted something cooked slow, I used my oven.

But as fall has arrived and my life has gotten busier, I've started to see the benefit of a slow cooker. The idea of walking in the door to a steamy bowl of stew or tender chicken certainly has some appeal. But is it worth adding another appliance to my kitchen. I decided it was time to find out and All-Clad sent me a slow cooker to test.

My first impression: this thing is h-e-a-v-y. It comes with a solid ceramic insert and a 15-page instruction booklet that add to the box weight.

After taking it out of the box, reading the booklet and cleaning any surface that would come in contact with food, I plugged it in and a digital screen lit up showing me all my options; whether I wanted it to start and stay on high heat, start high and shift to low heat, or go low heat all the way and for how long.

For my first recipe I decided on favorite, Beef Bourguignon, and I wanted to make it as lean and easy as possible. Normally, I'd selected chuck roast cut into 1-inch cubes, since it has lots of fat and connective tissue. The fat and connective tissue melts during slow cooking making for juicy and tender results. Instead, I used a leaner, 2-pound piece of grass-fed, organic beef top round. On average, 4 ounces of 7-bone chuck delivers 290 calories (68 percent from fat) and 22 fat grams, while 4 ounces of beef top round delivers just 183 calories and 4.6 fat grams (24 percent from fat).

Organic baby-cut carrots that required nothing more than a quick rinse went in next. And, slicing an onion seemed much easier than peeling a bunch of pearl onions and I quartered the white mushrooms instead of slicing them. This wasn't going to be fancy, but it would be tasty.

One more issue before firing up the slow cooker: flour. For weeks now I've focused on reducing refined carbohydrates, so I hesitated before doing the standard bourguignon step of coating beef cubes with flour. Knowing that my resulting sauce would be watery and thin without the flour, I used the least amount possible and knocked off the excess before browning.

Slow cookers may be slow, but their virtue lies in having a dinner entree ready when we arrive home from work. What I began to wonder was, during the process of getting everything ready for the slow cooker was when does anyone have the time to do what I was doing; certainly not at 4:30 in the morning before heading off to the office? My advice, prep the ingredients the night before and refrigerate them; just don't put a crock from the refrigerator right to the cooker; let it come to room temperature first.

My carrots went into the slow cooker first, since they needed the most cooking and should be nearest to the heat source. I added everything in layers, ending with mushrooms. I poured a mixture of red wine deglazed pan juices and broth over everything. I set the timer for 6 hours and pushed "start."

At first, liquid boiling around the edges of the pot bothered me. If the whole pot simmered at a low boil, the meat would cook to well done and toughen and dry in the process. Little did I know that was the way the pot got up to cooking temperature (about 165 degrees) and then held that temperature.

At the end of six hours the carrots weren't quite done and the meat was done, but toothsome, more due to its leanness and less to do with the cooker. Everything else was done perfectly. Letting the cooker go another hour would have been perfect.

Dinner was a success and I learned about a slow cooker's value.

Have you got a slow cooker? If so, you may want to try my Beef Bourguignon. Each make of slow cooker is a little different; use your experience to adjust the recipe accordingly.

• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write him at don@theleanwizard.com.