A New Look At Slow Cookers

Slow Cooker Revolution Revisited - Well Worth A Second Look

You may have noticed that slow cookers, or crockpots, have come front and center again after a slight lull in popularity some years back. There may be several reasons for this new interest. Maybe families and cooks are getting busier, looking for a way to eat good meals without having to fuss a lot after work or school. Or, maybe it's a desire to come back to the family table after some decades of the drive-thru, fast-food world.

Or, maybe it's the new and improved slow cooker itself. Let's face it - the very earliest slow cooker models were, at best, functioning. The first models resembled nothing more than a hot plate with a metal pot sitting on top. The heat source came from the 'burner' on the bottom. There was no surrounding heat and no nice heavy duty, heat retaining inserts. There were just a lot of scorched meals that took eight hours to cook. Not exactly a win-win for anyone. Yes, the earliest slow cooker was somewhat of a bust.

Fast forward a few years and the slow cooker with a crock lining was introduced. Then we saw the surrounding heat coils, and then the crock became removable. Everything was looking up.

However, even with the improvements made during these development years, slow cookers fell out of favor with the cooking public. This could be simply because they bought the earliest model and were very disappointed. Then, even if they bought an improved model, the size, structure, or cooking method still wasn't very appealing.

Today, I would invite any slow cooker naysayer to have a second look. I suspect even those who swore they would never try a slow cooker again would be persuaded to break their promise. The latest developments in slow cooker technology and design are quite dazzling. Manufacturers of this small appliance have taken many of the complaints about the slow cooker to heart and developed new models to answer those problems.

Go ahead and take a look at a few improvements in the world of slow cookers. I bet you'll be tempted to give slow cooker cooking another try.

Insert Built For Browning

This is probably one of the most frequently heard complaint. In order to get a good rich taste and golden brown look to chicken and meat, you have to sear it or brown it before it goes into the slow cooker. This means having a big skillet to wash afterward. That means the 'all-in-one-pot' theory doesn't really work too well when you have to dirty a skillet on the way.

That complaint was answered by simply making the insert in a slow cooker out of a material you can put on the stovetop and use as you would a skillet. Now we can buy a slow cooker with an insert made for browning the meat and other ingredients on the stove top. When it's ready, you just set the insert inside the slow cooker base, just like any other removable insert. This is a big improvement, but it does come with a price tag that's outside of the average slow cooker. But, if you do a lot of slow cooker cooking with browning meats and vegetables beforehand, this could be well worth the investment.

Buffet Style

We've all been to potlucks or holiday buffets where there's a line up of slow cookers of all shapes and sizes, and a tangle of cords to contend with, too. I'm sure you've also been in the situation where each slow cooker is getting a turn at being plugged in to heat up, then getting unplugged so the next one can heat up, and on and on. In other words, all the slow cooker can't be plugged in at the same time, making that whole idea of the slow cooker keeping foods warm a misnomer, especially at big functions.

It had to happen eventually. Why couldn't the slow cooker be designed in a way similar to other buffet style set ups? Now they are. You can buy slow cooker 'units' in single or double inserts of varying sizes, and the beauty of it is you can plug each unit into another unit to form a string of slow cookers.

 Picture a string of Christmas tree lights and you get the idea. So now you can have a small double slow cooker unit with dips, then a smaller single slow cooker unit next to that with soup, and a larger single slow cooker unit next to that with the main dish. If you host a lot of buffet style dinners, or just appreciate a neatly arranged matching buffet table, you'll find these new slow cooker very fun. And, at about the same price as a 'stand alone' slow cooker, this could be something to consider.

Load and Lock

And speaking of potlucks, when was the last time you took your slow cooker meal on the road only to find the cover slid off into the food somewhere along the way, splashing the contents all over the place. Probably more often than you care to remember. Not only is it a mess, but the food doesn't stay warm when the cover is off. Of course it only goes from bad to worse after that. You arrive, clean up the mess, plug the slow cooker in at your host's house, set the heat to high because now you need to heat it up fast, walk away to be sociable for a few minutes, and return to your delicious meal boiling away like crazy. Not good.

All that is now solved with just a few clicks of the handles on the newly designed traveling slow cookers. When you close the handles, the contents are sealed inside where they belong. Not only did the manufacturer figure out the sealed lid, but the stoneware insert itself is made to maintain the heat longer, which comes in handy as you travel over the river and through the woods. The price isn't out of line, either.

Stirring Robot

Everyone who has ever learned how to properly cook in a slow cooker knows that lifting the lid to stir the meal in a slow cooker is a no-no. As we know, lifting the lid even for a minute lowers the temperature of the contents, meaning it takes time to come back up to temperature, slowing down the total cooking time. But sometimes, especially with soups and stews, you want to give it a good stir.

Problem solved! You can now find slow cookers with built-in stirring paddles as part of one of the lids. After the contents cook for a few hours, the stirring paddle kicks in and stirs routinely, every half hour or so, for the rest of the preset cooking time. This does what many cooks are itching to do - stir the soup. This may be something that appeals to someone who cooks a lot of soups, chowders, stews, chili, and even spaghetti sauce. It may be comforting knowing your meal is being attended to by a stirring robot while you're away from home for the day. With the price still well within the range of other slow cookers, this could be a nice feature.

The slow cooker cooking revolution came and went, then came again. This time it brought with it an even wider range of possibilities to modernize today's cooking methods. The slow cooker will always be known as the 'fix it and forget it' kitchen appliance. But it seems that manufacturers will never forget about finding new ways to impress us.