I have an older version of this crock. It's the Smartpot but my timer thingee doesn't work anymore. My lid gave up a long time ago and I ordered a new one. That one gave up, too. Now, they don't make the lids anymore and I refuse to buy the same style crockpots in the store that I know that they are not gonna have replacement lids for!!! So, until I find a big crockpot with a glass lid, I am not buying a new one. Period. So, I improvise. Been doing it this way for a while.....like more than a year.
I love my crock pot. I really, really love it. It is faithful. It no longer has a lid but it never stops cooking. I even used it to make homemade yogurt in yesterday...but I will write up a separate post for that, as it wasn't the way crockpot365's blog says to use it. I sorta did my own thing.
Yes, I said that it doesn't have a lid and I use it almost daily for a variety of things. I use it for anything I would use an oven for. Anything....well almost. I don't bake bread in it, although I know some do. But I have made desserts, baked potatoes, breakfasts...really almost everything.
Here's how I used it for my meatballs this past week:
First I made up my meat mixture, with seasonings and whatever you add-I added onions, green peppers, eggs to hold it together, a few bread crumbs and some seasonings. After I used my mixer to mix it all up, I scooped out meat with my ice cream scoop to form balls and placed them into the bottom of the pot.
Then, as you can see below, I layered with aluminum foil and repeated the same thing.
Here's my crock just cookin' up a storm:
I wrote up one of my meatball recipes
here. But on this day, I was making meatballs in sauce for meatball subs.
A word of warning (or a tip, whichever way you see it) : if you cook with foil instead of a lid, it cooks much, much faster than with the lid. Don't say I didn't warn you. I only cooked these meatballs 2 hrs and waited to warm them until 2 hrs before I was going to serve them and they were steaming hot when we ate!
