Beef Curry Recipes (Slow Cooker or Instant Pot) (2024)

FAQs

Is stew better in the slow cooker or Instant Pot? ›

Taste: For overall taste, the pressure cooker was the hands-down winner. Beef, carrots, and potatoes all retained their rich flavors. After 8 hours in the slow cooker, they emerged bland and seemed to need salt.

Soups, stews and curries especially work well as a slow cooker recipe as they benefit from the slow gentle heat to bring out the flavours. A slow cooker recipe is also a healthy, low fat and efficient method of cooking.

If you want your corned beef in a fraction of the time it normally takes, I highly recommend cooking it in the Instant Pot or pressure cooker. A 3 1/2 – 4 1/2 corned beef will be perfectly tender in just 60 – 90 minutes as opposed to several hours in the slow cooker or on the stove top.

Crock Pot beef roast is all about that flavor

Instant Pot roast is still pretty delicious, mind you. However, it's noticeably less tender than the Crock Pot counterpart, with a few bits on the edges noticeably softer than the middle, and a significant amount of marbling and fat remaining.

Slow cookers utilize long cooking times to develop these richer flavors, while pressure cookers use high heat and pressure to impart as much flavor as possible in a shorter time.

Slow cookers are much better for cooking root vegetables and tough cuts of meat because the long, low-temperature cooking process is great for adding moisture and breaking down fat. Pressure cookers can get hot enough for meats and vegetables to brown in them when cooking, but slow cookers can't.

Your curry can taste bitter if the spices and garlic are burnt or if you've added too much fenugreek to the dish.

The easiest way to fix a bland and tasteless curry is by adding spices like red chili powder, cumin, coriander, garam masala, curry leaves and turmeric. Just make a quick tempering and pour over the curry to give it a nice punch of spices and herbs.

okay, secondly, you can put a tea towel under the lid. that will capture some of the moisture, it stops it circulating in the slow cooker. and then thirdly, you can use a corn flour slurry, so into a bowl, a little bit of corn flour, cold water, mix it with your finger, pour it in, stir it. you're done.

If you enjoy prepping your meal in the morning and letting it cook all day so that it's ready by dinner time, go with a slow cooker. Conversely, a pressure cooker might be the better option if you want an easy way to make healthy meals without much planning.

Why is my slow cooker beef really tough? ›

The meat was overcooked: Slow cookers are known for their ability to tenderize meat, but if the meat is cooked for too long, it can become overcooked and tough. It's important to follow the recommended cooking time for your recipe to ensure that the meat is cooked to the correct doneness.

Cook Low and Slow

Add your other ingredients and liquids, then set your cooker to “low.” Plan for 6-9 hours of cooking time for your warming slow cooker meal. This long, slow braise breaks down the connective tissue and fat, creating deliciously soft and juicy meat.

Traditionally cheaper cuts of meat always slow cook better. Slow cooking breaks down the connective collagen in meat, which turns into unctuous gelatine. This creates that soft and tender mouth feel we all crave.

However, Crockpots generally have ceramic or porcelain pots, while most slow cookers have a metal pot. As with a lot of cooking appliances, the biggest difference comes from the distribution of heat.

Unfortunately, once you overcook a piece of meat in the pressure cooker, there's no going back. You'll be left with a pile of dry, crunchy, tasteless fibers and no amount of additional pressure cooking is going to put that moisture back into the meat. Earlier, I explained how ingredient size affects the cooking time.

Benefits of a pressure cooker. Pressure cooking reduces the cooking time for most foods. This shorter cooking time can result in fewer nutrients being leeched out of food during the cooking process. Put another way, your food keeps more of the nutrients inside.

Using the wrong cut of meat.

The long, slow cook time leaves lean meat, like sirloin, tough and chewy, while tougher cuts, like chuck, break down and become really tender. Follow this tip: When choosing the best meat for beef stew, stick with using chuck meat.

Slow cookers can be useful for cooking stews, but generally the combination of low heat and a tightly fitting lid will mean that the auce doesn't get a chace to thicken (by reduction) and consequently the sauce can be a little thin.