Buying a slow cooker (which? & why?)

lindos90

Tesco have a slow cooker for £9.97 at the moment, not a branded one, but looks like the rest!

Its brushed stainless steel, and has low medium and high controls (no auto) anyone got one of these, are they any good?

I just dont want to spend lots more on a morphy richards or croc pot, if this does the job, but not sure if it has flaws like if it doesnt heat consitantly all around the pot or something, as that would be false economy.

If its good though, it does seem quite a bargin!

dianaross

Hi, I'm new to the site, no idea if this is where I should be posting this!

I have spent hours reading the posts on here as I want to buy a slow cooker. I know I want a large 6l or 6.5l cooker but I'm confused which to buy?

I have googled reviews on the cookers but can't find a conclusive answer, it seems everyone likes morphy richards on this site, but the digital one only has one temperature and the other one has limited settings? I like the cuisinart, more expensive but it has a keep warm option which seems like a good idea, I don't want to waste money throwing away a burnt dinner without this option or getting food poisoning because food has been left slowly cooling if I am delayed home. don't want to waste money buying features I don't need..

I like to have as much flexibility as possible but I can't find a cooker that has it all, they either have a range of temperature settings, a timer, keep warm function, auto setting but I can't find one that has it all. don't know what I actually need!

do I need auto function or can I just chuck everything in on low and leave it to warm up slowly from cold?

do I need to heat the oven up first or can I set a timer (separate plug or inbuilt timer) to come on later in the day and let it do the rest?

do I need a keep warm function or will leaving it on low for an extra couple of hours do the job without burning?

It appears that all the modern slow cookers run hot, are there any that are more like the old style of proper slow cooking?

Help!!

HalfaSixpence_2

Thing is, Dianaross, they really are very simple and you will probably do well with any of them. They won't burn even if you leave them on for hours over - the worst that will happen is that your meat or poultry might end up so tender that it falls to pieces - it will still be delicious. It is true that they tend to run a little hotter than they did in the 70's, but the plus side of that is that there isn't the problem there used to be with finding all the veg still weirdly hard even after leaving it on all day, and sauces come out less watery. The idea of the 'keep warm' is that you could, say, serve the kids at five and then you and DH eat at 7. Auto is quite handy, though neither of my current two have it, particularly if you want to heat food up from a cold start, but I generally brown stuff in a pan first as it makes it taste much better, so it is hot when I put it in.

You can also use one of those cheap plug-in time switches to stretch the cooking time by, for instance, switching it off for 15 mins in every hour, or to otherwise adapt it to your life. If you switch it to come on later in the day, just make sure you are not leaving it so long that the food is compromised. There generally isn't any reason to make it switch off that early, in my experience, as a working day of 8-10 hours is fine for most things.

I think it is one of those buying decisions in which there isn't any drastically wrong answer. You will find there is a way to do what you want to do with the simple ones, and most of the stuff that works well in slow cookers is pretty flexible for time.

I bought a very small one in a charity shop, then liked it so much that I bought a mid-size for 9.97 in Argos. Neither have auto. The second runs slightly hotter than the first; maybe hotter than ideal, but still works fine. I forgot about a chicken carcass I had put on for soup the other day and left it for nearly 20 hours, with no timer, and it was no problem. If my husband wouldn't have me committed I'd think about getting a big one too because I had to chop the ends off turkey legs to fit into my pot, and that wasn't easy. (Actually it involved a chopping board on the floor, an old kitchen knife and a sledgehammer.) I use the small one a lot for rice pudding.

I have a good slow cooker book which basically debunks a lot of the 'rules' like having to be at least half full etc etc.

hazelk

Does anyone have any experience of the Morphy Richards Ecolectric slow cooker 48790? This 3.5L version is 150 watts and has a lid with a silicone seal to stop heat escaping.As a new poster I am not allowed to post links:o but it can be seen on Amazon or John Lewis.
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

jessie18

:hello:Hi everyone, i dont know if anyone is interested but argos have a Breville Slow Cooker on offer at the moment was £38.99 now £15.59. It is a 4.5 litre one with brown crock, with high, low & auto settings. I purchased one yesterday and just hope its as good as it looks. I had wanted one for ages but couldnt afford it, by the way the reviews on it are very good The offer is on until 15th July, hope ive posted on the right board. Just off to try it out. Jessie18 x

ANY_CHANCE

I just bought a new SC from tesco unfortunately not the cheapest but cheaper than amazon and i liked the design.
http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.205-3048.aspx

I am hoping i can save money from using this, fingers crossed. I am going to need to do alot of reading the SC threads for how to cook with one!!

Queen-Bee_2

I've just bought one from Tesco - brushed metal outside, glass lid, 3x heat settings - at less than a tenner, it's a steal. Not that I have actually used it yet tho!!!

SpursDave

Great thread and having decided we would like to try this SC stuff, we have come to the conclusion that we like this Morphy Richards one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Morphy-Richards-48721-Cooker-Black/dp/B0010YPB2M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1248384019&sr=1-1

Or this one Cuisine Art one. And is this a Rolls Royce of slow-cookers?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cuisinart-CSC650U-Cook-Hold-Cooker/dp/B0007PC6IW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1248384019&sr=1-2

Personally I would rather buy one once rather than replace a cheap model to or three times, so the Cuisine Art one appeals with the 5-yr guarantee, but what do you guys think?

HalfaSixpence_2

HalfaSixpence wrote: »

I bought a very small one in a charity shop, then liked it so much that I bought a mid-size for 9.97 in Argos. Neither have auto. The second runs slightly hotter than the first; maybe hotter than ideal, but still works fine. I forgot about a chicken carcass I had put on for soup the other day and left it for nearly 20 hours, with no timer, and it was no problem. If my husband wouldn't have me committed I'd think about getting a big one too because I had to chop the ends off turkey legs to fit into my pot, and that wasn't easy. (Actually it involved a chopping board on the floor, an old kitchen knife and a sledgehammer.) I use the small one a lot for rice pudding.

Quoting my own post here... I finally found my lost Argos voucher and had some nectar points so decided to take the plunge on the larger cooker. I went for the 6.5 litre Crock-Pot, partly because it was available at Argos and partly because I was interested to see how the 'original' Crock Pot would cook compared to my smaller generic one. (Crock Pot is actually a brand-name, not just a description.) A small added bonus is that in colouring it looks very similar to the 4.5 one and I was hopeful the increase in size might slip under everyone's radar until I had sussed out whether it was a good idea or not! So far so good on that one...

First point - it did look so huge when I took it out of the box that I wondered if I had made a mistake! And as I currently store my slow cooker on a top shelf, it was rather challenging to get it up there. I have put the mid-size cooker away in the garage for the moment, partly because I want to try cooking smaller quantities in the big cooker to see how that works as an all-rounder and also because I don't have room for both in this kitchen - we are moving soon and I will see then whether having both is practical.

I had bought turkey-legs again as that was what defeated the smaller cooker. I checked before unwrapping them that they would fit, and yes - three went in no problem and I could have fitted a fourth in if I'd had it. Three is enough to feed us all (4 adult appetites inc two gannets) for two big meals easily - cost for meat £4.40. If DH and I weren't on low carb diets and it was served with rice or potatoes all round, it would do even more.

The blurb says 'ideal for 6-8' so I suppose that given I am always looking to cook for two meals or at least a meal and a lunch if at all possible, this is indeed a better size for us. It confirmed my feeling that the other one runs a little bit hotter on the 'low' setting than I would like - this one has a much lower level of bubbling. However it didn't seem to make much difference to the finished casserole - both worked fine.

The catalogue says 'two heat settings' but it does also have a 'keep warm'. No auto. It doesn't have a light, which is a bit of a pain - it would be easy to go out without realising you hadn't switched it on at the plug or something. And it is big and heavy - I think if this was my first purchase I might well have taken one look and returned it for the smaller one. But given that I was filling the smaller one with most meals and it wouldn't do some of what I wanted to cook, I think this will be a better size for us. Whether I will freecycle or sell the smaller or keep it for puddings and entertaining, I don't know yet - I'll see how this one behaves when I just cook for 4.

Molly41

Im so excited. I have been to Costco and bought a 6 litre Crockpot:beer: ....well it was for my birthday. It cost £40...(incl VAT) so 24.99 cheaper than Lakeland. I'm so happy!!!!