I first bought a slow cooker after our first experience butchering a steer at home. Unfortunately, we didn't know that we should try not to stress the animal before the butcher came, we weren't horrible to him, but we did keep him in a small pen by himself overnight so we were ready for the butcher. This change in routine meant that the meat was incredibly tough and the only way to eat it was to slow cook most of it. ( I have learnt a lot and written a lot about butchering since then, see more posts here ) That was about 10 years ago, and since then I've had the slow cooker going most weeks, for casseroles, curries, roasts and stock. Its turned out to be a very convenient way to cook, even if the meat isn't tough. And I have mostly used it to cook meat, apart from the occasional soup (and even soap !). I wrote about using my slow cooker back here. I also like to use other "low and slow" cooking methods to release the flavour - the solar oven and our...