Should You Brown Meat Before Slow Cooking?
Slow Cooker Chronicles
February 7, 2012 at 5:06 pm
by Heather Eng
I don’t know about you, but when I slow cook, it’s for the pure convenience of throwing ingredients into the pot and ending up with a dinner-ready meal a few hours later–no oven or stove necessary. That’s why I’m always conflicted when I come across crock-pot recipes that require you to brown meat on the stovetop first.
Conventional wisdom says that browning adds flavor. I’m all for making slow cooker meals as tasty as possible. But, well, browning seems to defeat the purpose of slow cooking.
A lot of you feel the same way. In almost all of our weekly Facebook slow cooker chats, one of you will ask Michael Tyrrell, our slow cooker expert and associate food editor, whether it’s necessary to brown meat before slow cooking. Here’s his answer, from last week’s slow cooker chat, along with guidelines about which meats should be pre-cooked:
I am always happy with my results not browning. I don’t feel you have to pre-brown any meat as long as it reaches a safe temperature. Just check it with an instant-read thermometer to ease your concerns.
Good to know, isn’t it? Now you (and I) don’t have to feel like we’re compromising the quality of our crock-pot meals if we choose not to fire up the meat beforehand.
Plus, there’s another benefit to not doing so: It saves calories! You’re not consuming the oil you’d need in the frying pan.
That’s all the convincing I need to just say no to browning.
Readers, what slow cooker shortcuts have you come up with? Share in the comments below.
Heather’s First Slow Cooking Attempt: Vegetarian Mexican Lasagna with Squash and Zucchini 
Slow Cooker Vegetarian Three Bean Chili 
Irina’s First Slow Cooking Attempt: Baked Potato Soup Made Vegan 
I just love making beef stew in my slow cooker and I never bothered with the browning process which some recipes suggest. When I realized that there was something special which happened when the meat was browned before going into the pot I was hooked. It is called the Maillard reaction and it serves a purpose.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/meat/INT-what-makes-flavor.html
If you have the old style all-ceramic crocks, just take the crock out of the cooker (and the lid off unless it’s all glass or all ceramic), put the meat and maybe the onions or other spices in the bottom of the crock, and put the whole thing in the microwave. Zap for long enough to make the meat sizzle, turn it over, zap again for a couple minutes. Drain any excess grease, put the crock back in the cooker, presto. One less pot to wash and you don’t lose the scorched-on effects of the browning.
Maybe it’s to keep the calories and fat down–since when you brown it, you drain the grease away?
I also think that adding browned gb makes it less convenient so I choose recipes that don’t require it.