The best thing about slow cooking is the way that you can throw a tasty meal together with just a few ingredients from the pantry.

Your slow cooker will pay for itself easily. The time you save when you are making a meal makes it priceless. But, if you intend to make slow cooking part of your regular meal times, then it pays to have a few staples to keep in your cupboards to make meal planning easy.

Beans – Beans are a very economical source of protein that cook very well in slow cookers . Each bean has its own flavour which can be enhanced by the herbs or spices you use to cook them. Beans make a great meal base when you cook them with meat or be the main ingredient if you are a vegetarian looking to create a quick dish. Whether haricot, lentil, borlotti, or black-eyed, beans can create some fantastic slow cooker meals.

Fibrous Vegetables – For starters, these means good old spuds and the average kitchen has at least a few potatoes lurking around in the vegetable rack.They are a really flexible food. Mash them, fry them, stew them, or chuck them in the crockpot. Potatoes thicken stews, soups, and meat-free dishes. Potatoes and other fibrous veggies like carrots, turnips and swedes, take a while to cook, so they can be added to the slow cooker with meat and can cook all day.

Fresh Herbs – Using herbs can dramatically change the flavour of almost any meal you make. You can buy dry herbs, but fresh herbs have a much better flavor. You can also grow your own fresh herbs in the house in pots on your kitchen window sill. You just need a nice sunny spot, some compost, and remember to water them regularly. Home grown herbs can even be dried to lengthen their shelf life, making them easy to keep in your store cupboard without worrying too much about wasting them. Remember to add your herbs near the end of the crockpot cooking time so the flavor infiltrates the cooked meal and doesn’t disappear during the cooking time.