If you’ve never tried summer CrockPot meals, please hear me out. I don’t know about you, but at the end of a hot summer day, the last thing I want to do is spend a few hours in the kitchen crouched over a hot stove or standing in front of a hot oven. And although many people associate slow cookers with winter comfort food, those unbearably hot July and August days are one time of year that I appreciate having my CrockPot the most.

Here are three reasons that summer CrockPot meals are perfect for making some easy, healthy dinners for your family.

1. It saves money and won’t heat up your kitchen on hot summer days

One of the biggest benefits of a CrockPot is the fact that it does not heat up your kitchen the way an oven does. This is never more important than it is in the summertime. Plus, slow cookers use less electricity than ovens, which means you can hopefully make up a little bit for all the extra electricity the air conditioning is using these days.

Speaking of saving money, the CrockPot is the ideal way to prepare inexpensive cuts of meat and make them taste like a high-end meal.

2. It gives you extra time to get outside and enjoy the warm weather

Looking beyond the physical characteristics of the CrockPot, I have to say that I really value the extra time that slow cooker cooking affords me to enjoy the warm weather. When you’ve got dinner cooking in your CrockPot at home, you’ll never have to leave the beach early so you can start getting dinner ready.

As evening starts to set in and the hottest part of the day is behind us, we like to go outside and enjoy the fresh air. I’m so glad that I don’t have to give that time up to go inside and cook dinner because I can just pop it in the CrockPot and forget about it. I can also spend more time relaxing in the terrace or reading before bed because there’s not a kitchen full of dirty pots and pans waiting for me to scrub after dinner when I make meals in my slow cooker.

3. You can prep healthy meals ahead of time & stay swimsuit/beach-ready!

Let’s be honest: summer is the time of year that even those of us who are usually lax about our diet try a little harder as we’re faced with the prospect of having to put on a swimsuit. We all know that healthy meals typically require more effort than picking up fast food, but a CrockPot allows you to prep healthy meals ahead of time so you will always have something to eat and can avoid the temptation of ordering takeaway.

Best of all, the meals that come out of my CrockPot don’t have that “health food” taste that turns the kids off because the slow cooker has a way of bringing out the flavour in foods. The extended cooking time means you get a better distribution of flavours – who wouldn’t want that? In fact, many of the meals you can make in a CrockPot are exactly the type of foods that improve with age, whether it’s a curry, chili, or braised meat, so it’s also great for batch cooking.

If you thought that CrockPots were just for making winter food, it’s time to shift your mindset a little and see just how much easier it can make your life during the summer. This is the time of year when us mums want to spend as much time as possible with our kids, and this is when a slow cooker is worth its weight in gold.