A slow cooker will not spoil the nutritional profile of your food!

Today's time is quite hectic and most of us are happy when we can prepare, for example, chicken breasts in a frying pan after a hard day at work and at the gym. And without ever having heard of a slow cooker, you might be thinking that preparing food slowly is actually completely pointless. In our article today, we'll explain why you're wrong and what benefits slow cooking in a special pot actually has.

Article content:

• What is a slow cooker?
• Well, yes, but what does it have to do with exercise?
• What are the benefits of a slow cooker?
• How to cook in a slow cooker?

What is a slow cooker?

Since most of you probably have no idea what a slow cooker even is, we should tell you more about it. It is an appliance that consists of three parts - an electric heating element that is responsible for producing heat, an earthenware pot and a lid. These parts are freely separable from each other and, as a rule, the pot itself can be used for cooking on other appliances, can be placed in the fridge and some people even serve food in it.

A slow cooker is an appliance into which you can just throw the ingredients and wait.

Yeah, but how does that relate to exercise?

You might be wondering right now why you, as an athlete, would actually care about a slow cooker. And we see basically two reasons for this - firstly, a slow cooker is great for preparing de facto all types of meat, and secondly, the method of preparing the meat is one of the most important factors in determining the nutritional composition of the final dish. Try to compare how fatty a quarter-pound steak is in a three-pack soaked in oil and how dietary a chicken breast prepared in a little oil can be.

What are the advantages of a slow cooker?

Now that you know that a slow cooker can cook more or less any meat while maintaining a good nutritional profile, we should look at some other benefits that should at least make you think about buying this appliance.

Prepares food simply

Not many of us have the time to devote to cooking for five hours instead of one. The great thing about a slow cooker, though, is that it's no work at all. It may take half a day to prepare a meal, but it won't require any activity from you - once you place everything in the pot, you don't worry about anything. The most you can do is check once every hour or two to see if the meat is burning. However, the low temperature largely eliminates water evaporation, so in most cases the meat doesn't get stuck, nor does it dry out.

The machine is intuitive to operate, making food preparation incredibly simple.

Preserves nutrients and enhances flavour

The slow cooker works for a long time, but at a very low temperature. And that brings with it two huge benefits. Firstly, many dishes will have improved flavour, as the food doesn't go through any giant heat and the ingredients have time to harmonise with each other in a certain way. And secondly, the low temperature also doesn't destroy as many vitamins, minerals and trace elements as other more aggressive cooking methods.

Not expensive, lasts for years and easy to maintain

A slow cooker is not a premium product that costs tens of thousands. On the contrary, the cheapest models cost from as little as a thousand, and you can find the golden mean from around CZK 3,000 (the CrockPot CSC027X is excellent in this category). Since slow cookers are easy to prepare and very simple to maintain, consisting only of washing the stoneware pot and lid under running water, there is more or less nothing to go wrong with them. If you buy a good product, it is an investment for several years.

You can cook almost anything in a slow cooker.

How to cook in a slow cooker?

You don't need to add any oil or other fat to the slow cooker, and it is not even advisable to use herbs or spices, which can do more harm than good after many hours of contact with the food. The cooking itself is really just a matter of putting the ingredients into the pot and turning it on to one of the two cooking intensities on offer. For example, just mix the beef with mushrooms and your preferred vegetables and cover the whole thing with water or broth, turn it up to a higher intensity and check it after about five hours. You will see for yourself that even otherwise tough and overgrown beef will taste good from the slow cooker. And don't worry - there's so much more you can do in it, from marmalade and pudding to any kind of meat to such pies and traditional dishes as sirloin steak.

What to take away from today's article?

The main thing you should take away from today's article is that although the slow cooker goes against the tide of hectic times, it actually makes food very simply, deliciously and without unnecessary mess. And perhaps most importantly for us fitness enthusiasts, it preserves a lot of vitamins and minerals and doesn't mess up the nutritional profile of the food because you don't have to add, say, oil or anything else. While during the work week most of you will probably stick to the quick-cooked chicken breasts, on the weekend there's no harm in swapping them out for a slow cooker beef steak.