Slow Cookers: Home Cooked Meals While at Work

After a long day at the office or while enjoying a relaxing weekend, it can often be rewarding for diabetics to return home to find their dinner already prepared for them. Even if you love to cook, a slow cooker meal can help people with diabetes stay healthy and nutritious, no matter how busy their schedule gets. Say goodbye to fast food dinners and slapped-together sandwiches with these slow cooker ideas and tips:

Plan a Dinner
One of the most common uses for a slow cooker is for easy meal preparation. A slow cooker heats food at a low temperature over time, which helps to ensure that your food stays moist and is cooked all the way through (as long as you leave your food in the slow cooker for the recommended period of time with the lid on!)

In order to prepare a meal so that it’s ready when you’re ready to eat, simply set the slow cooker temperature and a clock according to a recipe’s directions. Different meals will have different preparation times and requirements. Many slow cooker meals can take between four and eight hours – perfect for a post-work dinner or mid-afternoon lunch on a busy weekend.

Plus, you can not only cook meat, such as chicken, but slow cookers are also excellent ways to prepare rice and vegetable dishes for sides.

Use it for Snacking
Slow cookers are not only excellent ways to prepare healthy meals, but they can also help you prepare a healthy snack for your family. Use a slow cooker to prepare homemade applesauce, dried fruits, baked apples, rice, breads, beans, soups, sauces, and even hot drinks. To find the right slow cooker meal for your tastes, simply do an Internet search on slow cooker recipes. You’ll find thousands of results to suit just about any taste bud. You may also find excellent meal ideas here.

Try Dessert!
When you use a slow cooker to make your own dessert, you can rest easy knowing that the ingredients are all good for you (if you choose to include good-for-you ingredients, of course) and sugar-free. Use your slow cooker for a fondue treat, hot chocolate, rice pudding, sugar-free chocolate sauce, gourmet specialties, cakes, and more.

When you use your slow cooker for dessert, you can use the slow cooker like an oven if something needs to be cooked, or you can use it to heat food, such as sauces or chocolate fondue. Remember: just because you want dessert doesn’t mean it has to have sugar in it. Most slow cooker dessert recipes can be modified to be sugar-free.

Be sure to check out some of our meal recipes here. Many of these healthy Diabetes-friendly meals can be modified for the slow cooker.

Remember: Eat Healthy With Style!