So I no longer can make my favorite dishes that take hours to cook and many flavors to develop. These dishes need attention and dedication but they have lost to a smiley, blue-eyed competitor with huge cheeks who needs me more.
As a result, I started using the slow cooker. I made two different kinds of pot roast in it (on different occasions, obviously). It tasted very good, especially the one where I cooked the roast in red wine. Here is the problem, though. The food ends up looking sad and boring. Everything ends up being the same color. Does anybody know how to combat this issue? Is there an obvious solution here that I’m blanking on?
Clarissa's Blog 
I find that slow cooker dishes are usually improved by adding a little something fresh right at the end. Depending on the dish it can be chopped herbs, thinly sliced onion or scallion, a squeeze of lemon or lime juice. Just a bit of something fresh to give the flavor and appearance a little pep.
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Yup, garnish is the way to go. Herbs, lemon zest/juice, gremolata, etc. I don’t think there’s any way you can preserve the vibrant color of green vegetables and other greens with a long cooking time, slow cooker or not.
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I’ve never had that problem personally. The only thing I can think of trying would be adding ingredients at different times–for example, if I was making a stew, I might add the meat first, and then a few hours later the vegetables, and then even later any potatoes and whatnot. Broth is added with the meat and then again with the vegetables. I don’t cook with a slow cooker very often, though, so my response might not be the correct solution.
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The main advantage of a slow cooker is the convenience: You can turn it on and then totally ignore it until hours later when everything is cooked. Adding ingredients at multiple times during the day defeats that advantage.
I personally never cared bout how my food looked, as long as it tasted good. It’s a meal, not a work of art 🙂
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I just know that when my mom makes stew, she asks me to add things about four hours later or so. I don’t know what she does when I’m not home–I don’t keep track of how often I have what foods. :p
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Lyn suggests adding vegetables last to the slow cooker.
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Blanch some of the vegetables before putting them in the slow cooker? To blanch them you need to cut the vegetables and have a boiling pot of water ready, a scoop and a bowl with ice water. You dunk the vegetables in for 30 seconds to a minute, depending on the vegetable, scoop them out and then dunk them in the cold bath.
Blanching
If it doesn’t work with a slow cooker, I’m not sure anything would.
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Eat by candlelight. It will be too dark to see that the main dish is monochromatic.
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My solution would be to stop caring so much what it looked like or to find alternate ways of presentation so that whatever it looks like looks better.
Probably not so helpful.
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Stop caring? ABOUT FOOD??? Not even Freud himself could make that happen. 🙊
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This isn’t really an answer to your problem (though I would agree that putting in vegetables last and then tossing garnishes at the end add color and brighter flavors). But do you know of this cookbook? I am not a huge slow cooker enthusiast but everything I’ve made from this cookbook has been amazing!
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=7OJPPmXqL48C&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&gl=US&gclid=CNi58tym_cwCFbRaMgodP7cDqw&gclsrc=ds
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Very interesting! Thank you.
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