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5 Ingredient Slow Cooker Cookbook: Quick and Easy 5 Ingredient Crock Pot Recipes
5 ingredients + 15 minutes preparation time + Slow cooker = Fabulous One Pot Meal! Download FREE with kindle Unlimited! Have you ever found yourself going home, tired after a long day, only to discover that you still have to cook food? The prospect of having to prepare several ingredients, use a frying pan or an oven, and then perform other complicated and time consuming tasks may either make you to order out or skip dinner altogether. If think about it, using a slow cooker can solve all this. It will make you save time and energy and money. What’s not to like? On top of that, if you only need five ingredients to prepare your meals, and 15 minutes to make it, it’s even better! Slow cookers allow you to go home with food not only ready for you to eat, but also still tasty and warm at the same time. All you have to do is to prepare the ingredients in the morning, put all of them in the slow cooker and leave it. No mess, no dishes to clean, and not much effort compared to other kitchen appliances. This also means less work and faster preparation time. You arrive at home with a one-pot meal ready to eat. It will give you more time to enjoy your meal. Compared to ovens, slow cookers require a significantly lower amount of electricity. This means lower bills for you to pay. Another money-saver is that with slow cookers, you can buy the less expensive, tougher meats. Instead of the expensive choice cuts, you can use the tougher meats because the slow cookers will make the meat more tender. Inside • Useful tips for cooking with a slow cooker • Succulent beef recipes like the cowboy beef; • Mouth-watering chicken and turkey recipes; • Easy pork dishes like the apricot- glazed pork roast; • Delicious fish recipes like the garlic butter tilapia; • Delectable vegetarian meals like the artichoke pasta; • Luscious desserts like the chocolate cake; • Weekend breakfast dishes like the French toast casserole. Take note that I don’t count salt and pepper, water, and cooking spray as ingredients. Now let’s get cooking. Scroll back up and grab your copy today!
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75 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 12, 2015
366 people are currently reading
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January 6, 2024
5 Ingredient Slow Cooker Cookbook by Louise Davidson. The recipe chapters are “Breakfast”, “Beef Recipes”, “Chicken and Turkey Recipes”, “Pork Recipes”, “Fish and Seafood Recipes", ”Vegetarian Recipes” and “Dessert Recipes”. As per the subheading of the book, the author promises that these recipes are “Quick and Easy”. And the Amazon store page description of the book notes that these will only require “15 minutes preparation time” for each recipe. One thing I’ll note with that last bit is that you may need more than that 15 minutes of preparation time. We all prepare things at different speeds, so it might take you longer. There are no images alongside these recipes; so you are not able to see what the end result looks like.
So I have owned this book for a number of years now. I got it free when the price was decreased during a promotional period, back in 2017. Though, this is my first time reading it. And I’ve been looking for new recipes to try, or at least some that might inspire me. I chose to read this book because I figured that it might be okay.
On the Amazon store page description of the book, the author states “Take note that I don’t count salt and pepper, water, and cooking spray as ingredients.” Which is just weird. Because they are ingredients, regardless of the author trying to disregard them. So it’s already a clear sign that the recipes are going to have more than five ingredients. At the point I saw that, I thought “I’ll still give the book a read through”, but I was a bit sceptical as to its quality. If the author can’t even count the number of ingredients correctly, in a recipe book that relies on having a certain amount of ingredients, it’s a really bad sign…
Moving on to the Introduction of the book… Ummmm… I’m a bit mystified to one of the points the author is making. So the author is trying to say that using a slow cooker is easier because you can prepare stuff and put them into the slow cooker in the morning and leave it cooking all day. The bit I’m confused at is the “No mess, no dishes to clean…” point. Because it’s painfully inaccurate. Because of course there’s mess and dishes to clean. Stuff gets dirty when you prepare the food. And of course, after you’ve finished eating the meal, you’ll have dishes to clean then also, as well as needing to clean the slow cooker. Seriously though… What does the author think is going on? Of course there are things to clean. With a similar thought, in that point the author was trying to make, they recommend leaving the slow cooker running all day. However… Some of these recipes don’t take that long to make. The first recipe was a maximum of 3 hours, a couple later, there’s one for 4 hours. So just be aware, when choosing a recipe, that you need to be considerate of how long it takes, and whether it is one you can leave cooking and be back in time for it. As an example, if you are at work for 8 hours a day, and spent an hour or two total commuting to and from work, you probably wouldn’t be home in time for a lot of the 8 hour (or less) recipes. Plus, I’ll make a note that some recipes require you to be there at multiple times during the cooking process.
I do certainly appreciate that the included a variety of “Slow Cooker Cooking Tips” at the early stages of the book. Though I wish they had gone a little further into these tips, and talked more about each one. For example, there’s a tip talking about the cooking times of vegetables. But the thing is that there are all sorts of types of vegetables, all with a variety of different cooking times. There were definitely aspects of these tips that needed more explanation.
So, mentioning the amount of ingredients again… I was saying above that the author was not counting a few of them as ingredients. And there are definitely more instances throughout the book where they try and avoid listing ingredients as ingredients. The very first recipe of the book, as an example, “Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal”. One of the final steps is to “Top with raisins or any dried fruit. (optional)”. However, those are ingredients. And, considering that they are ingredients, even though they’re optional ones, they still ought to have been in the ingredients list. The same with “Steak Pizzaiola”; at the end step of the recipe, it says to “Serve with pasta, potatoes, bread or vegetables.” Those are ingredients, and none of those are listed in the ingredients list. And, let’s be honest, several of those things might take more than one ingredient to make. So the author is definitely trying to skirt around the “5 ingredients” promise they made. At some points, I counted up to nine ingredients in the ingredients list. Because the author weirdly doesn’t consider ingredients as ingredients, which just doesn’t make sense.
Moving on to talk more about these ingredients lists, there’s definitely not enough information in a lot of cases. One of the regular things I complain about for recipes books is that authors don’t include the size of the eggs we ought to be using. And this author has that fault, too. Sometimes they do include it, but not always. They often fail to include enough information on how to prepare ingredients.
Another issue I have with the ingredients is the requests that we use premade ingredients. Premade pasta sauce, cans of soup, premade soup mix, premade sauces, premade pudding mix, premade box cake mix, premade biscuit dough… My problem with this is that the author should be teaching us to make these elements. This is a cook book. So they shouldn’t be telling us to use premade ingredients; they should be instructing us on how to do it ourselves. And looking at the websites for supermarkets that are local to me, there are a lot of these premade ingredients that I wouldn’t even be able to get. One of the instances of this premade ingredient thing is really weird, if I’m blunt. So the “Dessert Recipes” chapter begins with the recipe for “Chocolate Cake”; it requires “1 box Chocoalte or Devil’s Food Cake Mix”. So the author has us make a chocolate cake with a chocolate cake mix. They can’t even be bothered giving us a genuine recipe on how to make it ourselves from scratch.
One key thing I’ll also talk about is that many of these recipes are not full meals. Many of these are simply one aspect of a meal, such as a meat element. However, to make it a balanced meal, you would likely have to make other elements to go with these recipes, such as vegetable dishes, or a starch element (if that’s something you want), etc. So please do not be fooled into thinking your cooking these meals will just be this recipe and then you’ll be done. You’ll likely have to still use more ingredients for those other meal elements. And, despite the author’s promise that you won’t have to cook dinner when you get home, you likely will, depending on what you choose to go with these recipes. Let’s use the “Beef Pot Roast” recipe as an example. It’s basically just the meat element of the dish, with two vegetables that would not be enough to be considered a full vegetable portion of a balanced meal. So you would likely need to cook a vegetable side dish to go with this. So you might end up having to cook that when you get home.
Another thing I noticed is the salt content. WOW! So, in my understanding, medical professionals have said that we should be having a maximum of 2 grams (which is 2000 mg) of salt per day. Having too much salt can lead to negative health consequences. But the salt content in some of these dishes seems ridiculous. The “Easy Beef Brisket” has “Sodium 2711 mg” per serving. That’s more than a day’s worth of salt in just one serving of this recipe. The very next recipe is “Corned Beef and Cabbage”, which says “Sodium 1600 mg”. A few recipes later, “BBQ Cheesy Chicken Bacon Sandwich” has “Sodium 1960 mg”. When I was going through the book, I saw a lot of recipes that require more than 50% of your daily salt content in just one serving of the recipe. There were several that were more than 100%. So, just be aware of the nutritional content of these recipes, especially if you’re looking to avoid salt.
I feel like a lot of the recipes would not be great for all beginners. Mainly because there are very minimal instructions to a lot of them. Some of them are just to place the ingredients in the slow cooker, set it for whatever time, come back later and then serve it. Which is problematic because a lot of beginners do need instructions on how to prepare certain ingredients. And not every beginner knows how to tell when things are cooked or not. If you have a reasonable understanding of cooking, I think it might be okay, as long as you have a decent knowledge of how to prepare ingredients, and know what signs to look for of whether things are cooked.
Overall, I feel like the book has a lot of faults. One of my main faults is the ingredients lists. Despite the theme of the publication being a “5 ingredient” recipe book, many of the recipes ask for more than 5 ingredients. A bunch of the recipe rely on premade ingredients. One of the main ones that sticks out for me is the chocolate cake recipe where we need to use a box of chocolate cake mix. Recipes like that are a huge failure, in my opinion. And there’s missing information in a variety of the ingredients lists. As for the instructions, a lot of the recipes lack instructions. So I feel like a bunch of them may be difficult for beginner cooks to prepare and make. There’s a huge salt content in a lot of the recipes. So many of them have more than 50% of your daily salt content in just one serving, some have more than a day’s worth of salt content in one serving. It’s really not a very good recipe book, in my opinion. There’s a lot of areas where it could be improved.
So I have owned this book for a number of years now. I got it free when the price was decreased during a promotional period, back in 2017. Though, this is my first time reading it. And I’ve been looking for new recipes to try, or at least some that might inspire me. I chose to read this book because I figured that it might be okay.
On the Amazon store page description of the book, the author states “Take note that I don’t count salt and pepper, water, and cooking spray as ingredients.” Which is just weird. Because they are ingredients, regardless of the author trying to disregard them. So it’s already a clear sign that the recipes are going to have more than five ingredients. At the point I saw that, I thought “I’ll still give the book a read through”, but I was a bit sceptical as to its quality. If the author can’t even count the number of ingredients correctly, in a recipe book that relies on having a certain amount of ingredients, it’s a really bad sign…
Moving on to the Introduction of the book… Ummmm… I’m a bit mystified to one of the points the author is making. So the author is trying to say that using a slow cooker is easier because you can prepare stuff and put them into the slow cooker in the morning and leave it cooking all day. The bit I’m confused at is the “No mess, no dishes to clean…” point. Because it’s painfully inaccurate. Because of course there’s mess and dishes to clean. Stuff gets dirty when you prepare the food. And of course, after you’ve finished eating the meal, you’ll have dishes to clean then also, as well as needing to clean the slow cooker. Seriously though… What does the author think is going on? Of course there are things to clean. With a similar thought, in that point the author was trying to make, they recommend leaving the slow cooker running all day. However… Some of these recipes don’t take that long to make. The first recipe was a maximum of 3 hours, a couple later, there’s one for 4 hours. So just be aware, when choosing a recipe, that you need to be considerate of how long it takes, and whether it is one you can leave cooking and be back in time for it. As an example, if you are at work for 8 hours a day, and spent an hour or two total commuting to and from work, you probably wouldn’t be home in time for a lot of the 8 hour (or less) recipes. Plus, I’ll make a note that some recipes require you to be there at multiple times during the cooking process.
I do certainly appreciate that the included a variety of “Slow Cooker Cooking Tips” at the early stages of the book. Though I wish they had gone a little further into these tips, and talked more about each one. For example, there’s a tip talking about the cooking times of vegetables. But the thing is that there are all sorts of types of vegetables, all with a variety of different cooking times. There were definitely aspects of these tips that needed more explanation.
So, mentioning the amount of ingredients again… I was saying above that the author was not counting a few of them as ingredients. And there are definitely more instances throughout the book where they try and avoid listing ingredients as ingredients. The very first recipe of the book, as an example, “Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal”. One of the final steps is to “Top with raisins or any dried fruit. (optional)”. However, those are ingredients. And, considering that they are ingredients, even though they’re optional ones, they still ought to have been in the ingredients list. The same with “Steak Pizzaiola”; at the end step of the recipe, it says to “Serve with pasta, potatoes, bread or vegetables.” Those are ingredients, and none of those are listed in the ingredients list. And, let’s be honest, several of those things might take more than one ingredient to make. So the author is definitely trying to skirt around the “5 ingredients” promise they made. At some points, I counted up to nine ingredients in the ingredients list. Because the author weirdly doesn’t consider ingredients as ingredients, which just doesn’t make sense.
Moving on to talk more about these ingredients lists, there’s definitely not enough information in a lot of cases. One of the regular things I complain about for recipes books is that authors don’t include the size of the eggs we ought to be using. And this author has that fault, too. Sometimes they do include it, but not always. They often fail to include enough information on how to prepare ingredients.
Another issue I have with the ingredients is the requests that we use premade ingredients. Premade pasta sauce, cans of soup, premade soup mix, premade sauces, premade pudding mix, premade box cake mix, premade biscuit dough… My problem with this is that the author should be teaching us to make these elements. This is a cook book. So they shouldn’t be telling us to use premade ingredients; they should be instructing us on how to do it ourselves. And looking at the websites for supermarkets that are local to me, there are a lot of these premade ingredients that I wouldn’t even be able to get. One of the instances of this premade ingredient thing is really weird, if I’m blunt. So the “Dessert Recipes” chapter begins with the recipe for “Chocolate Cake”; it requires “1 box Chocoalte or Devil’s Food Cake Mix”. So the author has us make a chocolate cake with a chocolate cake mix. They can’t even be bothered giving us a genuine recipe on how to make it ourselves from scratch.
One key thing I’ll also talk about is that many of these recipes are not full meals. Many of these are simply one aspect of a meal, such as a meat element. However, to make it a balanced meal, you would likely have to make other elements to go with these recipes, such as vegetable dishes, or a starch element (if that’s something you want), etc. So please do not be fooled into thinking your cooking these meals will just be this recipe and then you’ll be done. You’ll likely have to still use more ingredients for those other meal elements. And, despite the author’s promise that you won’t have to cook dinner when you get home, you likely will, depending on what you choose to go with these recipes. Let’s use the “Beef Pot Roast” recipe as an example. It’s basically just the meat element of the dish, with two vegetables that would not be enough to be considered a full vegetable portion of a balanced meal. So you would likely need to cook a vegetable side dish to go with this. So you might end up having to cook that when you get home.
Another thing I noticed is the salt content. WOW! So, in my understanding, medical professionals have said that we should be having a maximum of 2 grams (which is 2000 mg) of salt per day. Having too much salt can lead to negative health consequences. But the salt content in some of these dishes seems ridiculous. The “Easy Beef Brisket” has “Sodium 2711 mg” per serving. That’s more than a day’s worth of salt in just one serving of this recipe. The very next recipe is “Corned Beef and Cabbage”, which says “Sodium 1600 mg”. A few recipes later, “BBQ Cheesy Chicken Bacon Sandwich” has “Sodium 1960 mg”. When I was going through the book, I saw a lot of recipes that require more than 50% of your daily salt content in just one serving of the recipe. There were several that were more than 100%. So, just be aware of the nutritional content of these recipes, especially if you’re looking to avoid salt.
I feel like a lot of the recipes would not be great for all beginners. Mainly because there are very minimal instructions to a lot of them. Some of them are just to place the ingredients in the slow cooker, set it for whatever time, come back later and then serve it. Which is problematic because a lot of beginners do need instructions on how to prepare certain ingredients. And not every beginner knows how to tell when things are cooked or not. If you have a reasonable understanding of cooking, I think it might be okay, as long as you have a decent knowledge of how to prepare ingredients, and know what signs to look for of whether things are cooked.
Overall, I feel like the book has a lot of faults. One of my main faults is the ingredients lists. Despite the theme of the publication being a “5 ingredient” recipe book, many of the recipes ask for more than 5 ingredients. A bunch of the recipe rely on premade ingredients. One of the main ones that sticks out for me is the chocolate cake recipe where we need to use a box of chocolate cake mix. Recipes like that are a huge failure, in my opinion. And there’s missing information in a variety of the ingredients lists. As for the instructions, a lot of the recipes lack instructions. So I feel like a bunch of them may be difficult for beginner cooks to prepare and make. There’s a huge salt content in a lot of the recipes. So many of them have more than 50% of your daily salt content in just one serving, some have more than a day’s worth of salt content in one serving. It’s really not a very good recipe book, in my opinion. There’s a lot of areas where it could be improved.
November 25, 2017
Nice find
Has a number of recipes I'm interested in trying. Usually with the cookbooks I read, they have cheese. I am lactose intolerant, plus I don't like cheese.
Has a number of recipes I'm interested in trying. Usually with the cookbooks I read, they have cheese. I am lactose intolerant, plus I don't like cheese.
August 17, 2018
5 Ingredient slow cooker cookbook by louise davidson
Table of contents where recipes are in meal categories.
Short intro about slow cooking. Chapters on slow cooking tips and safety and more.
Each recipe starts with a title, servings, prep and cook time. List of ingredients and you should be able to substitute for your healthier dietary needs: low sodium, low fat, low sugar products.
Direction are included and some nutritional information per serving: Calories, carbs, protein and sodium.
There are NO pictures.About the author is listed at the end, other works by the author and cooking conversion charts, oven temperatures.
Table of contents where recipes are in meal categories.
Short intro about slow cooking. Chapters on slow cooking tips and safety and more.
Each recipe starts with a title, servings, prep and cook time. List of ingredients and you should be able to substitute for your healthier dietary needs: low sodium, low fat, low sugar products.
Direction are included and some nutritional information per serving: Calories, carbs, protein and sodium.
There are NO pictures.About the author is listed at the end, other works by the author and cooking conversion charts, oven temperatures.
June 12, 2015
Needs more veggies
If you are a meat eater and heavy carnivore, you'll probably love this. The recipes are simple and straightforward. Personally, I use my crockpot to increase my veggie intake so I found recipes too light on vegetables for my taste.
If you are a meat eater and heavy carnivore, you'll probably love this. The recipes are simple and straightforward. Personally, I use my crockpot to increase my veggie intake so I found recipes too light on vegetables for my taste.
July 31, 2016
Simple and quick
These are perfect for those learning to get a meal on the table. Some do contain processed foods. Others are great basics you will want in your repertoire.
These are perfect for those learning to get a meal on the table. Some do contain processed foods. Others are great basics you will want in your repertoire.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews