Slow cookers are very handy cooking apparatus, and if you want to very easily put into practice some of the most delicious recipes, a slow cooker is the right device for that.

Slow cookers come with a ceramic lining or the crock pot, and this pot is responsible for the food to be cooked, as it is the main conductor of heat in a slow cooker. They are designed to cook food over long periods of time between 170'F to 280'F or 80'C to 140'C. As the slow cooker is one unit, including the inbuilt crock pot, cooking requires much less skill, because you just put the ingredients into the crock pot and wait for it to cook.

For safety reasons the food in a slow cooker needs to reach 140? F/ 60'C within two hours to minimize the risk of food poisoning. Bacterial growth occurs in foods between 40'F to 140'F or 5'C to 60'C. This temperature zone is called the ?danger zone?. While the bacteria are killed at the operational temperature of a crock pot many of the toxins they produce are heat resistant.

Ten Cooking Tips for Beef in a slow cooker

1.Use cheap cuts of meat which are often the best. Shanks, chuck, briskets, shoulder and round steak all contain high amounts of tough connective tissue or collagen which is turned in gelatin by the slow cooker process producing tender, flavorsome meat.

2.Never place frozen meat in a slow cooker. Defrost the meat in a refrigerator or defrost the meat with a microwave.

3.Preheat the slow cooker before using or cook on High for 1 hour before turning to Low. The meat needs to reach 140? F/ 60'C within two hours to reduce the time the bacteria are in the danger zone.

4.Do not use large cuts of meat. Cut the meat into medium or smaller portions to increase the heat transfer rate.

5.Vegetables take longer to cook in a slow cooker, so cut them up into even sizes and place them at the bottom and around the sides where there is more heat. Also, aromatic vegetables like celery, carrot, garlic and onion help to add more flavor.

6.The cooker should be half to two thirds full. Do not overfill your slow cooker.

7.Brown the meat in a hot skillet or frying pan before placing the cut into the slow cooker. This intensifies the flavors by caramelizing the sugars in the meat and allows complex browning reactions to occur which require high temperatures. Browning also helps reduce the overall fat content and kills the surface bacteria.

8.Do not lift the transparent lid of the slow cooker during cooking. Removing the lid can reduce the temperature of the crock pot by 15? F/ 10'C which increases the cooking time by 30 minutes.

9.Cook the meat for at least 8 hours on Low. This gives time for the softening of the vegetables, the tenderizing of the meat and the blending of the flavors.

10.Use only half the quantity of herbs and spices you would use in a convention recipe. The flavor is greatly intensified during the slow cooker process.

There are some excellent slow cooker recipes for meats that you can prepare in the slow cooker. Beef recipes like beef stroganoff, beef stew, and beef sirloin roast among others are some of the meat dishes you can try.