My husband, children and I are intrigued by some of the posts in this topic thread. We are interested in several aspects of the American recipes:
1. You seem to use a lot of Condensed soup as a base for the gravy/stock element of your crockpot cooking. For us this seems very strange, as we would use homemade stock, or stockcube/bouillon, or even a good burgundy/bordeaux/chardonnay as the stock. I would normally thicken with either flour/butter, cornflour or arrowroot, and add sour cream or creme fraiche (1-2 tablespoons). You can then season to taste - none of us are salt lovers, but we adore pepper: salt or msg can be added as required. For something that would need a sauce, such as a cheese or parsley sauce, I would normally make a sauce from scratch with butter, flour, milk and some seasoning.
2. You seem to use a lot of canned, packet and bottled products, such as beans and salsa, but not as many fresh ingredients as I am used to using. I routinely add fresh vegetables to my cook pot, but in recipes I have seen on the internet and in US cookbooks, this is not so much the case - do you eat them separately, or are fresh ingredients more difficult to source? I just use what I grow in the garden, but for city dwellers this might be more difficult. Does it depend on where in the US you live? Does it also depend on the ethnic or national makeup of an area, as to what fresh/storecupboard ingredients are more readily available? We have Italian and Polish families living locally, which means we get many more authentic ingredients stocked in our shops.
3. A lot of recipes on here suggest that the meat is cooked so that it shreds and can be eaten in a bun. This seems strange to us, as we would eat "meat in a bun" as street food, or fast food. I usually cook a joint of meat in the slow cooker, so that it can be carved: my husband thought it might be because many Americans eat with a fork, and not a knife and fork as we do here in the UK.
I would be interested in any thoughts on this: obviously the two nations are not just divided by a common language!