Slow Cookers

There are few kitchen items more “American” than the slow cooker. It’s been roughly 80 years now since the patent “Crock-Pot” was issued, and the brand is still going strong today. The ascension of the slow cooker initiated far from American soil, dating back to the 19th century in a Jewish neighborhood in Vilnius, Lithuania. Families would gather and a stew with a host of ingredients would be prepared on Friday evening. It cooked overnight and everyone involved enjoyed its bounty over the weekend. Slow cooking at its finest!

The beauty of the slow cooker is it was (and still is) an alternative to the conventional oven. You could slow cook hearty meals under a low burner and the result was nearly identical to something an oven could churn out. By the 1970s crock pots were literally everywhere. There are museums dedicated to slow cooking lore, with recipes like halushki, a Polish dish of noodles, garlic, onion, and cabbage. The slow cooker also arrived at an interesting time when US women were inserting themselves in greater numbers into the workforce. This meant that household duties needed to be streamlined and the slow cooker was rightly dubbed the perfect “accessory for working moms.” Mothers could prepare the pot, leave it cooking, and then feed the family the following day. 

A simple Google search for slow cookers yields pages upon pages of results. It’s a fun product to search for because they come in all shapes and sizes, with price points that vary tremendously as well. In fact, you can find a slow cooker for as low as $10, believe it or not. And from there they easily hit the $300 level. The most important item to consider (away from price) is the size of the pot. Only you know your family, your and/or their eating habits, and this will determine the size of the pot you’ll need. Slow cookers come in everything from extremely small (2-quarts) to crazy large (10+ quarts). If it’s just you and another person at home, nothing larger than 3-quarts is necessary. For a family of three to five, you’ll be wise to consider a 4 to 6-quart model, while 8-quarts and higher is appropriate for seven-plus people. 

A slow cooker cooks best when it is at least half full. Overloading is not recommended, but neither is simply occupying 10% of it. A lot of folks love slow cooker cooking because you can prepare a dish that is certain to yield plenty of leftovers. So even if you know your family is not going to get through a large stew in one sitting, you can always freeze the leftovers and have future dinners ready. 

The brand Crock-Pot still reigns supreme in the slow cooker world. Their Crock-Pot Express Crock Multi-Cooker is consistently ranked as one of the (if not the) best all-around multi-cookers. In terms of bang for your slow-cooking buck, the Black+Decker 7-Quart Digital Slow Cooker is a great value, while the All-Clad 7-Quart Gourmet Slow Cooker is nipping at Crock-Pot’s heels for their crown. It’s a rough and tumble slow-cooking world out there, but there are plenty to go around.