If you have time to toss some pierogies and a few other ingredients into a Crock-Pot before work, you can sail past fatty fast food restaurants and skip some unhealthy choices on your way home. Still, it takes a little more work than throwing them in the pot if you want the best results.

A pork loin end roast is cut from the end of the pig closest to the shoulders. This section of meat includes bones and has a high fat content. While this makes the pork end roast hard to carve, it does lend itself to a method of cooking that allows the meat to be easily pulled away from the bones.

Rice, a seed of monocot plants, is consumed worldwide and used as a side to many different dishes. Rice takes a long time to cook and matching the time it takes to cook the rice with the main dish you are serving can be difficult.

Grits, which are made from coarsely ground corn, are a Southern breakfast favorite eaten plain, with milk and sugar or seasoned with salt, pepper and butter.

Tilapia is a freshwater fish found worldwide. Tilapia has mild, white meat that is low in fat content. One 100-g serving of tilapia contains only 96 calories, 30 g of protein and less than 2 g of fat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Tilapia can be cooked in a slow cooker such as a Crock-pot.

Some recipes are designed for Crock-Pot slow cookers. In most cases, you can still make your favorite slow-cooking dishes in the oven. Slow cookers vary, so there is no exact conversion time for slow-cooker recipes. Converting the cook time will also depend on the dish.

The flavor-packed juices leftover from slow-cooking chicken enhance any non-dessert dish. Once you observe a few important safety considerations, you can freeze leftover chicken juices in an ice cube tray, plastic zipper bag or other freezer-safe container for last-minute use.

Tangy sauerkraut seems to be made for the crock pot. The sauerkraut cooks slowly, releasing its savory liquid and flavoring all of the other ingredients in the crock pot. Cooking sauerkraut in a crock pot is as simple as rinsing the sauerkraut and putting it in the slow cooker. The crock pot does the rest of the work.

For a simple staple food, rice can be surprisingly tricky to make. Undercook it and it's wet or mushy. Overcook it and it burns to the bottom of the pan. Fortunately, rice that's merely wet is easy to fix. It may need additional cooking time if the kernels are still hard, or you may have simply used too much water.

Crock-Pots and other slow cookers are safe for preparing foods, including meat and poultry, as long as you use the device correctly. The low- and high-heat settings on the Crock-Pot reach a hot enough temperature to kill potential bacteria from the chicken.

The gizzard is an muscular organ found in the digestive tract of poultry. Since birds don't have teeth to grind their food, the gizzard helps them to grind their food before digesting it. Gizzards are used in many different cuisines from China where it is stir-fried to the southern U.S., where it is braised or fried.

Pork roast and sauerkraut are a classic combination; the sharpness of sauerkraut complements the richness of the pork. Cabbage, a cruciferous vegetable, is high in vitamins A and C and provides a rich source of antioxidants.