Yes KOKO you can brown the meat first sometimes i do this with roasts however with chicken and such i more or less stew them in the crock and then thicken the juices later. the reason for a large crock is occasionally i bring food into a bar i work at on sundays it has become so popular some times i am using three crocks but it is hard to spice evenly that way if i could do one large batch at a time the product would be more consistant.
