Today's cooks have learned to master recipes custom-made for the slow cooker, with spectacular results. Sadly, many crockery pot users from the avocado-green and harvest-gold decade never quite got the hang of it. "People were not applying the tenets of good cooking to slow-cooked recipes," says Rick Rodgers, author of THE SLOW COOKER READY AND WAITING COOKBOOK. "You can't just throw a chicken in a pot, add a can of soup, put the lid on, and come back 10 hours later and expect it to be delicious." That was the expectation of many people at the time, and when they ended up with a dish that was about as spicy as Marie Osmond, they blamed the slow cooker. Rodgers' remedy? "Essentially, what I'm asking people to do is to spend an extra 10 minutes to brown the meat and saute the vegetables before they put it into the slow cooker," Rodgers says. The caramelization of the ingredients adds a depth of flavor to any dish.

But browning is where Natalie Haughton draws the line. "I think that defeats the purpose," says the author of THE BEST SLOW COOKER COOKBOOK EVER. "My theory is, if you're using a slow cooker, you want it easy, and you want it finished and ready to serve when the pot is done."

Haughton reserves browning only for ground turkey and ground beef, because this step adds color and prevents the meat from cooking in clumps.