Oxtail this weekend - a bit unsure about recipe

[meriad]

Thanks for the gas / electric conversion.... I must be one of the few people here that has never cooked in a gas oven / on a gas hob so I have no idea!

I think I'll do mine in the slow cooker, as long as the taste is the same that's all that counts. I know it's stupid but I really resent having the oven on for a full 5 hours for just one stew for just myself - just seems such a waste of electricity

[Diflower]

I'd never put the oven on for that long either unless I really needed to.
Agree with Wm, can't see there should be any difference, so long as you seal the meat at high heat first, fry the onion/celery/leek/whatever, add everything else and bring to the boil.
Not too much stock though, the s/cooker definitely needs less than the oven.
You could always whack it in a hot oven for a while at the end, or pour the juice off and reduce it in a saucepan.

[Workingman]

When I got my first slow-cooker it had low, high and warm settings, and I somehow convinced myself that low was the cooking mode and high was to start things off.

For a long time I left things in on low for hours and hours, but a lot of them tasted roughly the same. It then occurred to me that I was cooking things for too long. When I reduced the time things got a lot better, and when I used high for cooking some things they got better still.

I am not entirely sure about the exactness of this conversion but is works for me.

SC low = Gas 1/275ºF/140ºC
SC high = Gas 3/325ºF/170ºC

If I see an ordinary recipe and I want to use the slow-cooker I use these and add or reduce the timing for Gas 2 or Gas 4.