For my birthday my fiance bought me a new gadget: the CrockPot BBQ Pit. This appliance is great for slow cooking and particularly barbecuing meat inside. For those who do not have a slow cooking grill outside this is a godsend!

The main trick to this is that is slow cooks the meat much like a CrockPot will slow cook chili or soup. Meat just falls off the bone by the time it is done. The slow cooker is perfect for cooking chicken and/or ribs. I have already cooked ribs in it twice and without fail the meat was as tender as anything else I have tasted anywhere. I cooked a six pound chicken in it and the only complaint I had about it was that the bird was falling apart when I tried to take it out.

Our local supermarket like many others across the country, gives their loyal customers a free turkey around Thanksgiving, and we ended up with two turkeys. So for Christmas dinner, I decided I would cook the other one in the slow cooker. My plan was to cook the turkey most of the day (about 12 hours) in the slow cooker so it would be ready by dinner. Late the night I found out my future mother in-law would have to leave dinner early the next day so I had to rush the turkey that wasn’t even close to being thawed out.

At 3 a.m. in the morning I placed the rock solid twenty pound bird into the cooker, threw on some spices, set it on low and went to bed. By 5:30 the next day, it was finished and I had to cut it with a spatula to get it out. The meat was just breaking apart so I cut the turkey in half with the spatula and scooped it out. The breast practically fell out. It was amazing. After about 10 hours of cooking I did have to use a turkey baster to get some of the juice out of the cooker as it was starting to fill up. The manual does not say what size turkey will fit, but I would not go any larger than twenty pounds.

There is one thing you have to be careful about, and that is when you open the cooker after it has been cooking for a while. The steam that escapes from under the lid is very hot and can burn you.

Cooking a rack of ribs can sometimes be a pain because they don’t really stand up well in the rack. Perhaps there is a trick I am missing and just need more time experimenting to find a solution.

The unit comes with two racks, one that stands up so you can place foot in it, and another one that is flat. What is unique about this slow cooker is with the racks in place, all of the fat and grease can fall under the rack (unless you take them out).

The CrockPot BBQ Pit is definitely a good thing to have around, especially in the winter when you just do not want to go outside to cook!