Read This Before Adding Milk To Your Slow Cooker Meal

Are you about to pour milk into your slow cooker? Wait a moment and read this before you do, and it may help keep you from ruining your dinner. Adding milk to your slow cooker before preparing a meal can result in the milk curdling. Yes, this is part of how homemade paneer or cottage cheese is made, but are you trying to make a creamy cream soup or a chunky cream soup?

If you are making anything in the crock pot that involves milk, it's best to add it near the end, like in this slow cooker country chicken recipe. About 15 minutes before the dish is done cooking should be enough. This happens because milk is an emulsion of water, butterfat, and proteins. Getting the milk too hot coagulates the solids, creating chunks in watery milk. It's edible, but probably not what you're going for. Salt and acids, both things every good dish needs, will speed the coagulation process along.

If you really need to add some dairy at the start of the slow cooking process, there are ways to do it that avoid a gross-looking result. You can always stabilize the milk by adding starch. Water is absorbed by the starch, which then prevents the proteins from binding. Make sure you add the starch while the milk is cold, or it will be another source of clumps. It's also helpful to avoid the mistake of adding too much salt rather than only a little when starting a soup, and to save most of the seasoning for the end after the broth has boiled down.

You can also use heavy cream. The extra fat helps prevent curdling. That's partly why you'll see more cream than milk in use in restaurant kitchens. Plus, you get the added benefit of a richer finished product.

When you do add the milk, make sure you don't add cold milk straight into the hot liquid without tempering it first. Take the cold milk and add bits of the hot liquid in until the milk is warm. Then you're safe to add that into the slow cooker.