Crockpots & crackpots

Ok so I've decided that I am going crazy. Like seriously crazy. It all started last week when I went with Jenna to the grocery store. Wait... actually before that. Ok I went out with some people to Teine & ate at a restuarant named 'something something Viking' which was basically a yakiniku (grilled meat)/sushi buffet restuarant. For $15 I could eat as much sushi, salad, french fries, chicken nuggets, etc. that I wanted. But the coolest part is that there is a grill in the table & you can pick out raw meat (different types & amt of fat) and raw veggies and roast them on the grill to eat. This made me really want beef which I haven't been eating a lot of in Japan because it's hard to find lean beef. So afterwards when Jenna & I went to the store I decided that I wanted to cook Sukiyaki which is basically beef hotpot.

Sukiyaki (recipe from Betty Crocker) is basically like this: take some thin sliced beef (or slice thin yourself) put it in a marinade made of sugar & soy sauce and let it set in the fridge for like 2 hours. Then you pull it out, drain the soy sauce back out (hold onto it!) and put the beef in a frying pay with some vegetable oil. Fry it up until it is cooked. Then you take some bamboo shoots, green onions, celery, and mushrooms (I hate them so I used potatos and pre-cooked them with some water in a pot to make them soft) and cut them up/prepare them. Ok after the meat is cooked you mix up 1/2 cup water & a beef bullion cube (dissolved) and mix it in with the soy sauce from before. Then you add it too the beef & put in your veggies. Supposedly you put each type of veggie in a corner & the beef in it's own corner. I put the potatos in the middle & they sort of spread out to cover other stuff. Then you're supposed to let it cook for 10 min. then add some spinach (didn't use) & cook for 5 more. What I did was I basically turned it on low, and let it simmer for 30 min. The meat was tender and delicious, the vegetables had absorbed the flavor of the broth, it was to die for!

Anyways, while I was out buying meat for sukiyaki I came a cross a 2lb. pot roast. I have never seen this large a chunk of meat in a Japanese grocery store before that wasn't already chopped up or sliced, and as a bonus it was American beef. It was freakin' awesome. I knew I had to have it. So I bought the sucker and took it home with me. Where it sat in the freezer for about a week. Then 2 nights ago I decided to cook it, I pulled it out of the freezer & left it in the fridge to defrost. This morning (forgot to set alarm yesterday) I made myself wake up early & chop up veggies for the roast. While I was half asleep and peeling potatos for the roast I heard a knock on my door (It's like 9:30 am on the weekend). It is Gian Carlo with his pet ferret (that is a looong story) on his shoulder asking me if I'll hold onto the little beast while he files down her nails. Apparently he trims them but they still have sharp edges and it hurts him when she has them unsheathed. I'm standing there, my hair looks like shit & I'm half asleep in my PJ's. Who does this? Seriously? I must be going crazy. So I turn him away and go back to my potatos.


Problem I've noticed with this slow cooker: If I use the cook times provided by the crockpot cookbook the veggies aren't getting tender. This recipe said 6-8 hours on low setting for the roast. I had it in and turned on by 10:00 am, when I came back at 6:00 pm (8 hours later) the vegetables were still firm. You couldn't poke through them with a fork. So I ended up turning the crockpot on high for another 3 hours but it was worth it. I had created... POT ROAST . It looked like pot roast, it tasted like pot roast, it was freakin' delicious. And on the plus side I have leftovers that I can eat for tomorrow night's dinner. Yum. Now if only I could find one or two more of these roasts ( I think it was a one off thing) then I'd freeze the suckers and eat them when I was feeling homesick for American food.


I have found no crockpot information on the web that would help me with my vegetable problem. This has actually happened more than once. I'm think that I will have to start: a. cooking for a longer time at higher temp all the time, or b. pre-steaming the veggies to soften them up. Which sort of defeats the purpose of my crockpot, because the whole point of it is that I can fill it up within a 1/2 hour in the morning, go to class & come back to a nice hot meal around 6:00 pm. Although I did find out from several different crockpot forum websites that the newer crockpots cook at a higher temperature than the old ones do because more people are starting to put frozen meat & veggies into the crockpot in the morning. The higher temperature ensures that the meat is defrosted & cooked by the time they get home. Only downside to this is that if you don't HAVE frozen meat to put in there your stuff is finishing faster than it's supposed to and burns on the bottom/sides of the bowl. The only way to combat this is to have a crockpot with a shut-off timer (i.e. sophisticated crockpot) or to hook up an old fashioned electric timer to an existing crockpot (i.e. old or basic model). This is totally bogus, they should just have a seperate setting for that & then you wouldn't have any problem. Like a switch you flip if you need the extra heat. (This is why I'm crazy btw, I am obsessed with crockpot production). Ok ok I will let you go for now. And yes Kyoto II is in the works and should be posted in the next few days.