You might not know that you can parboil potatoes in a slow cooker. To do so, chop and cover the potatoes with water, a little salt, pepper, and butter, and cook them until they're fork-tender, usually about six hours on low.

Then, mix the dressing for your potato salad as you normally would, such as mayonnaise, dill, whole grain mustard, and a splash of red wine vinegar. 

You can also make a German-style potato salad with bacon, light dressing, and baby potatoes.

"I love to make spinach-and-artichoke dip in my slow cooker," Chungah Rhee, the author of the blog Damn Delicious, told Business Insider. 

"You can just free up so much of your time by using a slow cooker and hang out with your guests instead of laboring in the kitchen," Rhee continued. "Especially for side dishes or dips. You put it all together, set the time, and it comes out ready to go."

"Another favorite of mine is this corn-and-jalapeño dip," Rhee told Insider. 

The recipe combines many of the summer's best ingredients, from fresh and vibrant jalapeños to sweet corn.

One of the benefits of making a slow-cooker Buffalo-chicken dip, like this recipe on Rhee's blog — or any other side dish in a slow cooker — is that it can be prepared well ahead of time and reheated when you're ready to eat.

Rhee's advice for someone using a slow cooker for the first time for entertaining is actually to start out with a dip or side dish. 

"If for some reason it doesn't turn out, because we all know that can happen using an appliance for the first time, it's not detrimental to your dinner party being a success," she said.

This creamy queso dip from Martha Stewart uses ingredients like American cheese and pepper jack cheese, a can of evaporated milk, diced tomatoes with chilies, sliced jalapeños, red onion, and cilantro. 

"Brisket is a natural partner for the slow cooker, as a gentle braise renders it meltingly tender," Kim Laidlaw writes in her cookbook, "Everyday Slow Cooking: Modern Recipes for Delicious Meals."

Laidlaw's recipe for slow-cooked braised brisket includes garlic, onion, dry red wine, carrot, and chicken or beef stock, with a chimichurri sauce.

One of the best ways to use braised and slow-cooked pork shoulder is to make pulled-pork sliders, like this Damn Delicious recipe, with all that tender meat.

To elevate the dish, top the meat with barbecue sauce and slaw before sandwiching it between two fluffy brioche buns or potato rolls. You can also use the carnitas to make tacos.

Nothing screams an end-of-summer cookout like sauce-covered ribs, like Laidlaw's recipe as shared on Cooking by the Book. After cooking them in the slow cooker, place them on a baking sheet in your oven and broil them until they're slightly crispy.

Brats with onions, peppers, and garlic simmered in the slow cooker with beer — like this recipe by The Magical Slow Cooker — are one way to use your slow cooker on Memorial Day.

Top your brats with a bit of sauerkraut and put them on buns for an easy summer dish.

If you're looking to add some carbs to your menu, look no further than a piping hot pot of mac and cheese. Martha Stewart's recipe for mac and cheese in a slow cooker calls for evaporated milk, three kinds of cheese, and homemade breadcrumbs.

"The recipe for slow-cooker garlic-herb mushrooms is divine and so easy," Rhee said. "Mushrooms made in a slow cooker are truly the best."

One of the best — and easiest — ways to use your Crock-Pot or slow cooker is by making shredded Buffalo chicken, such as this recipe by The Magical Slow Cooker.

Add seasoned chicken breasts to the slow cooker and cover with your preferred Buffalo sauce. Then add a splash of ranch dressing and a cube of butter, toss your chicken breasts in the mixture to coat fully, and cook until the chicken is shreddable. You can use it for Buffalo-chicken sliders, salads, or tacos.

You can make any style of wings in a slow cooker, from Asian-style to barbecue and Buffalo wings. Add your wings to the slow cooker, add in your sauce of choice, toss to combine, and let them cook for a couple of hours on high.

To make them crisp up, add a cornstarch and water mixture to your slow cooker. After they're cooked through, broil them for a few minutes in the oven.

Meatballs make the perfect appetizer for parties big and small and are easy to make in a slow cooker. 

Place your seasoned, raw meatballs into the slow cooker, top with sauce, and let the slow cooker finish them off, says one recipe by Spend With Pennies. Serve them on their own with toothpicks or stuff them inside toasted sub rolls for a meatball sandwich.

I've heard nothing but good things about Cook Out from friends and colleagues, so I knew I had to try the famed North Carolina-based chain when I visited this year.

As a New Yorker, I thought $12 an hour for a cashier seemed a bit low — NYC's minimum wage is $16.50, per January 1 — but in North Carolina, Cook Out's pay is higher than the minimum. Per the state's Department of Labor, its minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

You can get burgers in many different varieties, including Cook Out Style (homemade chili, slaw, mustard, onions), Cheddar Style (cheddar, bacon, grilled onions), Steak Style (A1 sauce, grilled onions, lettuce, tomato), or House Style (quesadilla sauce, lettuce, tomato, onion), to name a few.

You can also get grilled chicken sandwiches, hotdogs, barbecue, chicken fingers, wraps, quesadillas, corn dogs, hushpuppies, wraps, many different types of fries, onion rings, a Walkin' Taco (more on that later) … the list goes on.

Cook Out is also famous for its 45 different milkshake flavors.

It's enough to make a gal's head spin.

The option to dine in is relatively rare for Cook Out. Most locations are just a drive-thru or a walk-up window, so I wasn't that surprised by the lack of customers inside. I had already noted that our location had a line going around the building for its drive-thru.

This location was clean, nicely decorated, and had a lot of seating.

My BBQ Plate came with a generous serving of pulled pork topped with hot sauce, and sides of coleslaw, fries, and hushpuppies.

I couldn't believe I got all that for less than $7. A similar meal from Raising Cane's, for example, would cost $15.49 for four chicken fingers, fries, toast, coleslaw, and a drink.

A McDonald's value meal might be cheaper, at around $5 for a burger, nuggets, fries, and a drink, but I found that Cook Out's food seemed a lot fresher than McDonald's and other fast food I've tried.

I'm a big barbecue fan from my time living in Louisiana during college, but the New York barbecue scene doesn't compare to what's going on in the South.

So it's been a while since I've had some truly delicious Southern barbecue. Even at a fast-food joint like Cook Out, the pulled pork did not disappoint. It was moist, not chewy at all, and well-seasoned.

As a rule, I will always prefer a creamier slaw to a more vinegary one, so I was a fan of Cook Out's slaw, which is homemade and more mayo-forward than the recipe at other places.

An order of hushpuppies on their own is $1.99, and I seriously considered buying another serving after quickly inhaling the ones that came with my meal.

If you don't know what hushpuppies are, they're a staple of Southern cooking with only a few ingredients. They're essentially delicious, deep-fried cornmeal.

Cook Out's hushpuppies were not heavy at all. Instead, they were light and savory. I couldn't get enough.

I tried to get as many sauces as I could to dip my fries into. Seen here are Cook Out's Buffalo sauce, Polynesian sauce, barbecue sauce, honey mustard, and ranch.

This was a huge hit with everyone at my table. It was tangy, slightly sweet, and had the slightest bit of spice. It paired well with my fries and my hushpuppies.

Usually, I'm a sucker for special sauces — if I could drink Cane's sauce or Chick-fil-A sauce, I would. But I wasn't a fan of Cook Out's offering.

Maybe it's because everything else at Cook Out seemed so homemade, but the second I tore the wrapper off the Special Sauce, I got the ick.

In terms of taste, I couldn't really get a handle on what this was supposed to be. I thought it would be similar to Russian dressing (ketchup and mayo mixed together), but it reminded me more of nacho sauce than anything else.

I consider myself to be an Oreo/cookies-and-cream milkshake connoisseur. I've tried it at any fast food establishment that offers it. Until this day, I would've said that Chick-fil-A's cookies-and-cream shake was the gold standard.

But now there's BCO and ACO: Before Cook Out and After Cook Out. This was the creamiest, thickest milkshake I've ever gotten at a fast-food joint. The chunks of Oreo weren't overwhelmingly big, and the vanilla ice cream was perfect.

At $3.99, that's $2.50 cheaper than the comparable cookies and cream shake at Shake Shack.

This reminds me of In-N-Out, another fast-food chain that has Bible verses across its packaging.

The verse on Cook Out's milkshake cups is "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

I'm not religious, but I was certainly rejoicing in my shake.

A Walkin' Taco, which costs $3.69, is a bag of Doritos topped with chili, cheese, lettuce, and sour cream. For 55 cents, you can add fresh jalapeños.

I'm not trying to be dramatic, but the Walkin' Taco — a culinary delight popularized in the Midwest and found across the South — is pure innovation and needs to come to New York City. What a game changer! I would love to walk around Central Park while munching (mess-free, might I add) on a taco in a bag.

Anecdotally, the trays seem to be Cook Out's most popular offerings. You can choose from any manner of main dish (including burgers, chicken, quesadillas, or barbecue), two sides, and a drink (or a shake for an extra $1.60).

The base is $7.99, but adding toppings has small upcharges. My brother got a burger with cheese (an additional 50 cents) and tomatoes (an additional 10 cents), along with an order of chicken nuggets and hushpuppies.

I can't speak to what a plain burger is like, but I quite enjoyed the cheeseburger. It wasn't too thin like some other fast food burgers can be, and I thought it was well-seasoned. It was also quite juicy.

The nuggets, in my opinion, were average. They weren't too bland, but they didn't have any strong flavoring to them, either.

New York may have a lot of things, but we are missing Cook Out, and I desperately wish that would change. The closest thing we have is Mighty Quinn's, which has a more limited menu and is more expensive.

In total, for my family of three, we paid $34 for two burger trays, a barbecue plate, and two shakes. There's nothing in New York that compares, not even McDonald's or Wendy's.

Now that I've tried Cook Out, I'm already hoping to plan another trip to a state with a location nearby — so don't be surprised if you see me popping up in Tennessee or Virginia sooner rather than later.