Tonight's Dinner: Beef Burgundy

For Christmas this year I requested a new slow cooker...the 4-quart Rival I've had since we were married in the '80s still works fine, but it wasn't the right size or shape for a number of recipes I was interested in trying, such as roasting a whole chicken all day.

I've really loved the new crockpot model, an oval 6.5-quart from All-Clad, especially the feature which automatically turns it to "warm" when it's done cooking. The only thing I miss compared to the Rival is that the Rival had a feature where cooking could start on High and then it would automatically turn to Low after about an hour.

Along with the slow cooker I got a couple new cookbooks, Lynn Alley's THE GOURMET SLOW COOKER (click title of this post) and THE GOURMET SLOW COOKER, VOLUME II.

Tonight I tried out my first recipe from Volume I, Beef Burgundy, and this immediately joined Cola Pot Roast as one of our family's crockpot favorites. I traded the recipe's pearl onions for small red potatoes, which I cut in half, and the flavor and texture were amazingly good.

Based on these results, I can't wait to try more of this author's recipes.

Update: More on slow cookers can be found in this post of February 25, 2009.