Hamlyn All Colour Cookery: 200 Slow Cooker Recipes: Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook

You should never wash chicken - and yet this book tells you too. This book should be removed from your site in case someone actually washes it.Washing raw chicken before cooking it can increase your risk of food poisoning from campylobacter bacteria. Splashing water from washing chicken under a tap can spread the bacteria onto hands, work surfaces, clothing, and cooking equipment. ... Only a few campylobacter cells are needed to cause food poisoning.

I was after recipes where you can just put everything in the slow cooker and leave it for hours, not ones where there are cooking processes needed at the start. Almost every recipe in this book starts with 'Heat some oil in a frying pan...'.

If like me, you brought a slow cooker for one pot meals that require minimal prep work - something you can throw ingredients into before work, set it and forget it - don't get this book. The majority, if not all of the recipes require about 15 to 30 minute prep work on a stove (browning meat, cooking sauces, softening veg) before you can put it in the slow cooker - which for me takes the point out of slowcookers. If I had time to stand over a stove for 30 minutes, I'd just cook a meal on the stove. The recipes are great, but if like me you use your slow cooker for convenience - this book isn't for you.

Some of the recipes are good but there is far too much prep time involved for most - I'm used to flash frying meat to brown it but this is ridiculous - it can be 20-30 mins prep at which point just finish the dish off in the oven!

I’ve now made 4 recipes and found the results disappointing. 2 of them I’ve adapted by added more spices/adapting as the family found them really bland - of the other 2, 1 curry was watery and insipid, and the lemon chicken was almost inedible bitter. I’ve followed the recipes closely and usually get good results, but find this book disappointing