Donna-Marie Pye - Cookbook Author
An Interview with the Author of 300 Slow Cooker Favorites
Donna-Marie Pye is the author of 300 Slow Cooker Favorites - a new crock pot cookbook packed with a fabulous collection of her family favorites.
The publisher first had in mind to do a gourmet style cookbook, but Donna-Marie thought that her slow cooker friends would be more interested in family-friendly dishes. After all, she liked to slow cook “with things [her] family would eat using things on hand.” She sent in some sample family recipes, and the publisher was sold on the plan to put together a book that would work for slow cooker fans.
Donna-Marie had been collecting crock pot recipes for a long time. When she went away to university, she requested a crock pot for Christmas. “I was never one to eat pizzas and the things most university students eat,” says Donna-Marie. Once she got her crock pot, she was able to home cook and have hot meals waiting when she finished up with classes.
Crock Pots Make Healthy Meals for Busy Families
Once married with kids, the crock pot was a real lifesaver. Donna-Marie was driving an hour to work, and that doesn’t leave much time for cooking. It was important to Donna-Marie to serve her family healthy meals, and although crock pots get a bad rap for being unhealthy, that’s a product of the “meat and canned soup” era.
Crock pots were originally designed as bean cookers. Even if they’re used to cook meats, they should be the inexpensive cuts with less fat. “You don’t want to put rib eye or prime rib in a slow cooker,” says Donna-Marie. “That’s too much fat, and it ruins the meat.” She explains that cheaper cuts that lack the fat marbling as tenderized with the steam that builds up in the slow cooker.
Even with a great collection of recipes built up over the years, Donna-Marie wanted to play around with her slow cooker and develop some brand new recipes. She is a home economist and food developer, so the slow cooker book project gave her the perfect excuse to try new ideas.
As Donna-Marie worked on perfecting her ideas, she came up with lots of great ideas to make slow cooking even more fun. Some people avoid recipes that are difficult to remove from crock pots. These include some of the breads, cakes, puddings and meat loafs. She found that she could make handles out of tin foil to lift items out and tried putting a tea or dish towel right under the lid to absorb extra moisture on recipes that needed a crispier taste.
Recipes Tested Multiple Times
Donna-Marie made all her dishes and took notes so that her recipes would be perfect. That might seem like an obvious step, but some cookbook writers skimp in this area. They’ll include recipes that just “sound” good. In this case, Donna-Marie made them all again and again. “I had six slow cookers going some day,” says Donna-Marie. “I would take food to neighbors.”
Her book is out now, and 300 Slow Cooker Favorites is an absolutely delightful collection of recipes. Donna-Marie included all those little tips and tricks that make the difference between a dish coming out OK and it coming out great. It truly is one of the best crock pot cookbooks on the market.
For more information on this great cookbook, see 300 Slow Cooker Favorites.
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