200 Low-Carb Slow Cooker Recipes: Healthy Dinners That Are Ready When You Are!

I went off grain and sugar over a year ago. This has definitely been one of the more useful books I purchased to help me learn how to cook without those staples of American cuisine.The Good: I have tried over half of the recipes at this point. My favorites are: Barbecued pork ribs, beef stroganoff, firehouse chili, chicken chili verde, and chicken with root vegetables. I have gotten a lot of mileage out of these. They are good as is, but they invite experimentation and have given me ideas for recipes of my own. Don't be afraid to add your own twist or increase the spices!The Not-So Good: Some of the dishes are disappointing and have been nearly inedible - the curried chicken was a disgrace to its name. Most of the fancy-sounding beef dishes come out tasting like pot roast. Some dishes, like the clam chowder, taste great but are too rich. Many recipes call for Splenda, which I never have on hand. (I substitute stevia or just leave out the sweetener altogether.)Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone who uses a slow cooker.

Dana Carpender has made a serious study of adapting classic recipes from around the world to work with modern low carb diets. In this latest offering, 200 Low-Carb Slow Cooker Recipes, she proves once again that you don't need refined grains and sugars to enjoy healthful, satisfying food - no matter your culinary traditions or meat of preference. The key is quality ingredients, simply prepared.Dana Carpender is a believer in keeping it simple and freshly prepared whenever possible. None of the ingredients were hard to find at my supermarket except perhaps the low-carb imitation honey that shows up in a few recipes. Of the dozen or so main dish recipes I tested in 200 LCSCR I can honestly say that seven were big hits with my family, a few were just okay and just one was bad. All of them cooked on time and just as predicted. There were some very satisfying desserts toward the end, with several variations on cheesecakes and custards that turn out splendidly in my slow cooker. Although I do not normally have a use for appetizer recipes, there is even a section for that - which contains an outstanding hot artichoke dip.I am impressed with the author's diligence in keeping most recipes under 10 grams of net carbs per serving. Dana really does stick to the universal "rules" of low carb dieting; lots of veggies and meats, occasional artificial sweetening, a sprinkling of fruits now and then and a bare representation of grains and sugars -- and only when absolutely necessary for flavor, never as filler. She is good at innovating more nutritious subs for common starchy side dish ingredients; fauxtatoes (cauliflower) and mashed turnips are big players at her low carb table. Eat the 200 LCSCR way and you will probably have better, more varied natural nutrition than ever before in your typical American diet.The recipes for lc condiments & sauces are a big bonus to those of us who suffer from sticker shock at the supermarket's low carb pricing practices. Readers of her other lc recipe books may find some of these items familiar, but hey, it is convenient to have them all in one place. And as for convenience, well...slow cooking is the essence of convenience to modern time-challenged dieters.Did I make it sound as if this book is one of the best kept secrets for low carbers? I hope so, because it is.-Andrea, aka Merribelle.

We eat with our eyes first -- so I was really disappointed to find that this book, nor its follow-up, "300 Low Carb Slow Cooker Recipes", has absolutely no photography of the meals within it. It made it difficult to envision the final result. I was really excited to receive these books -- I wanted to cook my way through them and blog my results. But I couldn't get past the initial flip-through.The print and the paper are low-grade and the layout heavy on text -- I assume to cram 300 recipes into one book. It seems cheap in production value and felt dated, like a cookbook from the 70's. There was some cheesy clip art of vegetables and crock pots when a recipe was particularly short, but overall, the book, graphically, did nothing to make me want to cook the recipes within.I'd rather have had less recipes overall and better recipes in general. Most of them seemed the same, just swap out the protein, swap out the spices. Put in your veggies, put in your liquid. Put in your meat and spices. Cook for 6-8 hours. Eat. Change the spices if you want mexican, thai or indian... it's pretty common sense stuff. Between the 2 books -- 500 variations on the almost the same thing.The copy that accompanied each recipe was a bit lackluster -- conversational, but exceedingly brief in some spots and not very descriptive. Things like "I got this from a reader" or "this used to be in one of my other cookbooks". Not very engaging.The low-carb cooking in these books also require you have things like Guar and Xantham in your pantry -- which is maybe a staple for low-carb cooking. I'm glad she does provide a pantry list of things you should keep on hand for cooking low carb, but those things aren't really my bag.I give it two stars for effort (as clearly 200 recipes is not a small task) and the pantry list, but there are other slow cooker books that are better. Maybe not for low-carbers, but for slow cookers -- definitely. I like "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes" (all of them). They have great images and realistic recipes.A lot of people seem to really, really love this author -- and that's cool. If you like a lot of recipes and don't care about that other stuff, then this is probably a great book. But if you like to "read" cookbooks and prefer cookbooks that speak to your eyes and tantalize you with their words, keep looking. I've decided to return them.

I like this book so much I have bought copies for several friends. Quick, tasty, easy. Food values are listed. Good variety of recipes.

At my house sometimes we are carb-free and sometimes we aren't. This book is perfect for the slightly or completely carb-free, on the go family.The recipes don't require that I have a large amount of strange carb replacements in my meal. Dana gives lots of substitutions in the recipe so I can use what I have available.I'm not a great cook in fact I don't like cooking at all. There is nothing worse than having no idea what to cook for dinner. I look in the fridge and see things that (in my mind) could only come together on a reality cooking show. However, time and time again I've looked through the book and found something quick easy and delicious.I also like that fact that a lot of these meals work in summer. You don't have to have a hot heavy stew. There are a ton of international dishes that would work any season, any situation.This book is super user friendly with easy to follow suggestions and lots of variations.

Ich habe das Buch waehrend meinem Urlaub in Deutschland bestellt. Hat mir gut gefallen, dann habe ich es weiter verschenkt.

Ce livre donne beaucoup de renseignements pratiques concernant le temps de cuisson avec une mijoteuse électrique.Le plus grand désavantage à mes yeux vient du fait que les recettes doivent être modifiées pour le contexte français, car les ingrédients sont souvent introuvables en France (beaucoup de produits de marques inconnus ici).Néanmoins, on trouve de bonnes idées de recettes. A nous de les adapter !