The Bottom Line
- Colorful and interesting presentation of Southwest Recipes
- Some recipes can be followed by even the most novice cook
- Quite a few options for vegetarians
- Slow cooking is so convenient!
- Some ingredients may be difficult to locate outside of the Southwest
- Some results not very exciting
Description
- Southwest Slow Cooking is an attractive book utilizing southwestern colors and designs.
- Recipes include every day or fancier meals, soups, sides and desserts.
- An entire chapter is devoted to southwest vegetarian recipes for your slow cooker.
- Southwest Slow Cooking would make a great gift (along with that new slow cooker).
Guide Review - Southwest Slow Cooking
Southwest Slow Cooking includes 101 recipes to make in your slow cooker. My old Rival Crock Pot is the exact one pictured in their introduction--I knew at once that these were not slow cooker snobs!
In the introduction to Southwest Slow Cooking the authors mention that the best things about slow cooking is that many of the recipes are healthy, economical, and, in most cases, everything is, well, approximate. It usually doesn’t matter if something cooks 15 minutes longer because you’re stuck in rush hour traffic. Where time may be critical, they let you know in the recipe itself.
The Southwest Slow Cooking book is a soft cover, with heavy, glossy pages and an attractive, interesting layout. Some of the recipes have a picture of what the finished product might look like.
If you don't happen to live in the Southwest, there may be some challenges to getting ingredients for some of the recipes. Pretty much everyone has access to cilantro or cans of enchilada sauce today, but chipotle chiles in adobo sauce may be tougher.
I asked a few friends to try some of the recipes in the book, and what we found is that these recipes make a good start. The results were good, but a few were a little bland. I think the key here is that Southwest Slow Cooking will give cooks of all levels a good place to start with great ideas for easy, healthy meals. Then the cooks in all of us can take over to flavor the meals, add and subtract to suit our own palates.
