Could a slow cooker be the secret to a healthy start in 2024?

Northern Irish chef Nathan Anthony shares his tips for slow cooker success.

When you think of slow cookers you might imagine stews cooking for eight hours or your grandparents’ vintage version from the Fifties. But the classic (and thankfully updated) appliance is having a resurgence – and going seriously viral.

Northern Irish TV chef, cookbook author and content creator, Nathan Anthony knows a thing or two about using the slow cooker in interesting ways. His Instagram, Facebook and TikTok accounts, @boredoflunch have blown up with easy meal ideas to make in both slow cookers and air fryers. Simply sticking a Camembert in an air fryer got 100 million views, and his Thai mango chicken curry in a slow cooker earned up 50 million.

So why is slow cooking suddenly so popular again? “You literally load it up and go,” says the 33-year-old from Belfast. “If you have a busy nine-to-five, or you have kids, [if you want to] meal prep, plan ahead, they’re healthier as you don’t need to use oil in them.”

And this style of cooking could save you lots of cash, he reckons, too. “They’re better for your energy [usage] as well, they run pretty much on a light bulb’s energy, so people are saving an awful lot of money when they’re cooking their meals in them.” The initial outlay isn’t much either. “You can get some for £20 or £25 on Amazon and they last a lifetime – they’re very inexpensive, they’re very durable.”

Plus, really filling them up and batch cooking for other days can be a lifesaver when it comes to counting the pennies in January, and beyond, and saving time spent in the kitchen.

“Working habits and lifestyle in the office has changed, people are working from home more,” notes Anthony, a regular on ITV’s This Morning and Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch, and this means we’re all around more to throw ingredients together earlier in the day, to bubble away and be ready to eat at dinner time.

Who wants to waste time standing and stirring? “My followers absolutely love slow cooker recipes, it just makes life easier for people. My granny always had one but now we’ve seen a huge surge in students and people who just want really simple easy recipes – there’s been certain times of the year where we’ve seen a massive uplift in terms of sales around Freshers’ Week.”

PICTURED ABOVE: (Left) Nathan Anthony | Dan Jones/PA; (Right) Bored Of Lunch: Healthy Slow Cooker Even Easier by Nathan Anthony | Ebury Press/PA

His third cookbook, Bored of Lunch: Healthy Slow Cooker, Even Easier, seeks to prove just how quick and simple lots of nutritious meals can be to prepare – the ethos being, just five minutes prep and under 500 calories a portion. The pea and mint soup, for example, doesn’t even involve much chopping before throwing it all in the slow cooker and clicking the ‘on’ button. The Irish farmhouse chicken soup is inspired by his mum’s cooking (“It’s just a taste of Ireland and something my mum would have made growing up”) and the chorizo and seafood chowder is a nod to the amazing seafood available on the coasts of Northern Ireland.

And he wants to challenge what people think a slow cooker can do. There’s chicken pad Thai, sticky whisky BBQ ribs and mussels with nduja in a creamy sauce. Even baking isn’t off limits; Anthony’s no-knead olive and rosemary bread couldn’t be more simple, and the chocolate and peanut butter lava cake looks delicious for when you want a bit of balance to your healthier diet this January.

Anthony didn’t actually cook himself until university. “I’ve just been around good home cooks my whole life. I think Irish people are traditionally really good home cooks and I have some phenomenal cooks in the family – my auntie was a chef in New York, my granny is a phenomenal cook, my mum is a great cook as well. I’d always watch them. (His mum, he says, had all boys and would never let them cook, “She always said you’ll burn the house down – I’m doing it!”).

At university, he surprised his housemates with how natural a cook he was – and both a slow cooker and an air fryer featured heavily in his student days (“When you’re living with six people, everyone’s fighting over the hob”). After that, and into his corporate career, it just stuck.

It was in lockdown that Anthony started posting dishes online and by the end of the pandemic, he had 30,000 followers on Instagram. Six months later it was 100,000. “It started to multiply at a scary rate. This time last year on I had about 900,000 followers. Since Christmas last year, there’s now another million on Instagram alone,” he says.

In June 2023, he left his senior management job to focus on his new-found food career. “I really didn’t want to leave, I loved it, loved my team. I just thought I’d write two cookbooks [Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Airfyer Book and Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book] and be like, ‘Wow, what a cool thing to do’.” But he hadn’t predicted the books’ success. “So my life is is totally different to what it was before – I feel like I’m living someone else’s life a lot of the time to be honest!”

For anyone who wants to pay closer attention to calories, each recipe in the new book “politely” states them. “I’ve always calorie counted just because I’m in to my fitness, it works for me and these recipes fit around my nutritional goals and needs as well. But theres a real degree of healthy balance, you can have a pie on a Wednesday, then a lighter meal like tomato arrabbiata the next day – I’m not a fan of restricting.”

So what are his tips for slow cooking success? “One of the things that I always say is that I would typically load it the night before and just put the pot in the fridge, or put it in a freezer bag, and then just load the slow cooker in the morning so you don’t have to get up in the morning start chopping onions – it can all be done the night before,” he says.

If you’re cooking meat, cut the chunks roughly the same size, so you get a consistent cook. Less may be more when it comes to spice, because cooking low and slow means flavours infuse more intensely than other cooking methods. And always add less liquid or stock than you think you need, ‘It’s difficult to take away extra or to thicken larger quantities of liquid,’ he notes in the book.

Adjust the setting – fast or slow – to how your day is looking too. “If you’re working from home you can pop it on at lunchtime and it will take three to four hours, or if you’re out all day you can put it all in the morning on a low temperature for seven to eight hours.”

Bored Of Lunch: Healthy Slow Cooker Even Easier by Nathan Anthony is published by Ebury Press, priced £20. Photography by Dan Jones. Available now

Words by Lauren Taylor, PA

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Dan Jones/PA

Slow cooker red pepper bruschetta pasta

Serves 3

INGREDIENTS

• 2 x 300g jars of roasted red peppers, chopped
• 15 cherry tomatoes, quartered
• 700g passata
• 1tsp dried oregano
• 4 garlic cloves, grated
• Generous handful of fresh basil
• 250g fresh lasagne sheets, cut into thick strands
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 4tsp balsamic vinegar
• Croutons
• 50g grated vegetarian Parmesan cheese, to serve

METHOD

1. Add the peppers, tomatoes, passata, oregano, grated garlic, salt and pepper and most of the basil to the slow cooker.
2. Cook on high for two hours or low for four hours.
3. Add the lasagne strands and cook for a further 20–25 minutes (if cooking on low, you may need slightly longer).
4. Plate up and top the pasta with the balsamic vinegar, croutons, Parmesan and remaining fresh basil.

TIP: To make your own sourdough croutons, cube a couple of slices of bread, toss them in olive oil and put in the air fryer at 200°C for six minutes, or on a baking tray in a 200°C oven for 10–12 minutes.

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Dan Jones/PA

Slow cooker carrot cake overnight oats

SERVES 4

INGREDIENTS

• 500ml skimmed milk
• 150g porridge oats
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 1tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1tsp ground nutmeg
• Handful of dried fruit (around 50g), chopped
• 200g Greek yogurt
• 2 large carrots, grated

To serve:

• 25g chopped walnuts
• Zest of 1 orange
• 4tbsp honey

METHOD

1. Mix all the ingredients, except the walnuts, orange and honey, in your slow cooker.
2. Cook on low for eight hours.
3. If you’re an early riser, throw it all in and cook on high for three hours.
4. Serve with the chopped walnuts, orange zest and a drizzle of honey.

TIP: If it looks a little dry at any point, add a splash more milk. If cooking overnight, add a few extra splashes at the start so it doesn’t dry out.

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Dan Jones/PA

Slow cooker steak and Guinness pie

SERVES 6

INGREDIENTS

• 800g beef steak or rump (or 1kg brisket), chopped
• 440ml can of Guinness
• 200ml beef stock
• 1tbsp tomato purée
• 1tsp dried rosemary
• 1tsp dried thyme
• 1tsp dried oregano
• 1 bay leaf
• 1tbsp brown sugar
• 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 1 celery stick, chopped
• 1 heaped tbsp cornflour
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry
• 1 egg, beaten, to glaze the pastry
• Salt and pepper, to taste

METHOD

1. Throw all the ingredients, except the pastry and egg, in the slow cooker. Cook on high for four hours or low for seven to eight hours. Discard the bay leaf.
2. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Top the beef filling with the puff pastry, tuck it round the pie, then brush with the beaten egg.
3. Pop the ovenproof slow-cooker pot (without the lid) into the oven for 25 minutes until golden and crisp. If your slow-cooker pot isn’t oven-safe, decant the filling into an ovenproof pot, cover with the pastry, brush with the egg and bake as above.
4. Serve with Tenderstem broccoli, and carrot and parsnip mash, if you like.