Best of Bridge: The Family Slow Cooker

The new Best of Bridge authors, who inherited the brand when the originals retired in 2015, have responded to the resurgence of slow cookers with 225 new recipes. The book begins with some helpful notes on slow-cooking, including temperature variations between cookers, low and high settings in the recipes, and how to select a slow cooker, plus a longer section on freezing leftovers. Many of the recipes use slow-cookers creatively and don’t consist solely of the hearty soups, meats, and puddings people expect from slow-cooking. The authors include cinnamon roll casserole, beef and butternut squash tagine, and bacon jam, as well as fancier fare such as caramelized onion pasta carbonara, braised sauerkraut with pears and wine, and coffee pots de crème. As with many Best of Bridge cookbooks, this one could use more pictures, but the easy-to-follow instructions, readily available ingredients, and fun, conversational tone more than make up for its spare visuals. (Oct.)