The Easy Way To Soften Cream Cheese For Your Slow-Cooker Meal

Softening ingredients for a recipe can be a somewhat tedious task. However, if you ever need to soften cream cheese before adding it to a slow cooker recipe, then you're in luck — content creator Stephanie Gigliotti shared a handy trick on Facebook that you should keep in mind.

One thing to note: This trick only works if the recipe calls for cream cheese toward the end of the cooking process. One example of this is our healthy slow-cooker buffalo chicken dip, which doesn't call for cream cheese until the chicken has already spent four hours in the slow cooker. If your recipe falls into this category, Gigliotti recommends taking the cream cheese block out of the fridge about one hour before you need it, then placing it on top of the slow cooker lid as it continues cooking the ingredients inside. The heat from the lid will soften the cream cheese to just the right consistency.

This trick is great because it requires no extra work on your part. The only thing you have to do is remember to set the cream cheese on the slow cooker at the right time. Besides that, though, the slow cooker will do all of the work for you — which is why this tool is so great to begin with, right?

Of course, as mentioned above, this trick only works if you need the cream cheese at the end of a recipe — but what if you need to add softened cream cheese immediately? Recipes like our slow-cooker pink grapefruit cheesecake call for softened cream cheese before you even add anything to the slow cooker. In this case, you'll have to rely on other methods, but fortunately, these still require very little effort.

One option is to simply leave the cream cheese out on the counter at room temperature. If you cut the block into smaller pieces, then this method should take between 30 minutes and an hour. Just make sure to spread the pieces out enough so that they're not touching. Another method is to use the microwave, which is fast and easy — just place the block of cream cheese in a microwave-safe bowl and heat it on low in 30-second intervals, stirring each time, until it's as soft as you need. Finally, you can also place the sealed package of cream cheese into a bowl of warm water; it should be softened in just 15 minutes.

These tips are useful because there are plenty of non-slow cooker recipes out there that also require softened cream cheese, like certain kinds of baked goods. Softened cream cheese is also a blank canvas for delectable dips, so it's wise to know how to achieve that desired consistency in a pinch.