My crockpot has a timer, and after the time on the timer runs out it automatically switches to the “Keep Warm” setting (many things want to cook for ~ 8 hours on low, but on workdays the house is empty for more like 10 hours). Can’t do that with my oven.
D’oh! I forgot there were gas ovens. :smack:
For me, I’m not going to leave my gas oven or stove on when I leave the house, no matter how short the time, or if I go to sleep. That’s just not going to happen. So, if I want to cook when I’m not home or I’m asleep, it’s a crock pot.
I have 2 crockpots. One is 30 years old and the other is a few years old (but much bigger). I use them mainly for stews/soups/curries. I’m not too particular if my vegetables get overcooked, but I have all my timings pretty well worked out, so I can throw in stuff in the crockpot at proper times if I want to.
Yes, I could make a good soup or stew or curry on the stove (and I actually prefer the pressure cooker for certain types of curry), but it’s an easy way to cook without too much hassle.
I actually have two crockpots and one of them is new. They’re essentially the same in terms of heating the room they’re in.
It’s not really “that much heat” in the grand scheme of things, but remember that I’m the guy who puts on shorts and complains about the heat if it goes over 65 F. I walked to work today in 48 F weather, in short sleeves and khaki pants. Regardless of the amount of heat, putting it outside means less heat indoors and until there’s a layer of snow outside, I pretty much see that as a good thing.
wait a minute, crock pots put off heat? I’ve never really noticed heat except for right there at the crock pot…doesn’t warm up the room that I’ve noticed
I like to use my crock pot for spaghetti sauce. I can cook it all day long.
This year we did not have too many tomatoes for canning so I cooked it down in the crock pot…worked great.
I’ve always had crock pots that cook a lot faster than it says it would. The one we had before the two news ones was considered (by me) as a microwave crock pot…sure cooked fast!
You can take crocks full of anything you want to keep warm to parties, just plug it in. The oven ain’t going with me and warming in a microwave is not a substitute…
Slow cookers are for braising and simmering (and a few misguided souls are attempting to use them for baking; I’ve tried it and had nothing but disasters). Ovens are for baking and roasting. It’s two completely different methods of cooking. It’s kind of like asking why you need a skillet when you’ve got an oven.
I can’t vouch for that exact model, but my mom bought a new Oster just 5 years ago, and it’s fine. There’s not a lot to it, so any more money would really be gouging. Mom likes to use it to roast the turkey in; I find that it’s not big enough to get the convection currents and radiated heat I need for a good browned skin. Pictures like this are the fantasy of a food stylist; the lid won’t even fit over that thing. I prefer to cook the dressing and sweet potatoes in the Oster, leaving the kitchen oven free for the bird. But with a smaller bird, the Oster would be fine. We’ve been using them for at least 35 years that I can recall. Only thing to be aware of is that the whole thing gets hot, exterior included. We’ve got a couple of 2X4s that belong to the Oster, for it to sit on so it doesn’t melt or scorch the tile in the basement. (If you have ceramic tile, it’s probably fine. We have vinyl.)
Truth. Sad, sad, truth. I’ve found I can compensate for, as others have said, using fattier cuts of meat to some extent. Also I only use Low on new slow cookers. I’ve got one old slow cooker and one new slow cooker, and while I haven’t measured the temperature, Low on the new one seems a bit hotter than High on the old one. I never use High on the new one.
If you do a lot of slowcooking, you learn which recipes were written before slow cookers got hotter.
With the right containers, you can easily get an oven to do everything a crock pot would do. For example, I have a 14" wide, 6" deep cast-iron pot with a lid. The lid even has little bumps on it to make sure the condensation drips evenly down on to the food, not just running off to the edges. There are plenty of other covered ceramic, glass, glazed metal that could do a crock pots job if heated in an oven. You set the oven to a much lower temperature than for baking - 200 or 225 F would be common.
It’s supposed to be dramatic, as in: it costs more to run an oven for an hour than to run a slow cooker for 8 hours.
As for why I have a slow cooker and an oven: babies. I bought my slow cooker when my oldest was a baby because from about 4pm onwards she’d become very sooky and needy, and right through what should have been meal prep time, I’d be occupied with her (we call it “the witching hour” even though it lasts for several). Slow cooker allowed me to time shift meal prep to earlier in the day when she was happy and easy going.
I’ve continued using it because it’s a great big vessel so I can cook large batches in it. There was a time when I’d prepare bulk batches of three separate dishes simultaneously for the freezer - one in the slow cooker, one in the oven and one on the stove top. It’s cheap to run, needs minimal intervention during the cooking process, and is easier to clean than the oven.
I make a killer pot roast in the crockpot.
One roast
One package Lipton Onion Soup Mix (dry)
Two cans of Campbell’s Beef or Golden Mushroom soup, undiluted
Dump it in the crockpot before you leave for work and when you come home you will have a falling-apart roast that made its own gravy. If someone is home they can add carrots and potatoes to the last hour of cooking.
Apparently, you can also make lip balm and lotion bars in the crockpot.
CrockPot - Less energy, easier to use, tastes great.
And if you use a crockpot condom, clean up is even easier.
Well maybe. If you have a gas oven it may be better to run that, because all the heat it produces goes to heating your home (as opposed to lets say a gas fired furnace which may be 80%-90% efficient due to venting). So it may use less energy overall if the extra heat of the oven is desired. Plus the crock pot is electric, which is inefficient as produced, so even if the crockpot is 100% efficient, that energy was not produced at 100% efficiency.
Of course. But that’s moving the goalposts. That’s not asking, why are there slow cookers when we have ovens, that’s asking why are there slow cookers when we have dutch ovens. The answer to that one is: a slow cooler is a self contained electric powered dutch oven for the countertop. Dealer’s choice.
This is the next thing I am going to try in my crock pot. Thanks!
It’s not so much fat as it is connective tissue (although pieces with a lot of connective tissue do tend to have a good amount of intramuscular fat). With tough pieces of meat that have a lot of connective tissue, the collagen breaks down to gelatin, which then coats the meat fibers and makes it taste moist and pleasant, despite the meat being cooked well past well done.
Let me know how it goes! I’ve also added sliced onions and minced garlic.
Toss in a third to a half a cup of red wine.
I put a pork butt roast in the oven last night and took it out this morning and added some sweet baby rays. I’ve cooked a lot of these in the crockpot, and it was definitely more tender and much moister in the oven at 225.
That sounds like my dad’s pot roast, only he did his in the oven. He used a 7-bone roast with the 7-bone removed. Around the meat in the roasting pan he’d put potato wedges, onion wedges, carrots (2" sticks), green bell pepper strips, and canned/jarred mushrooms – not mixed together, but separate so that people could choose what veg they wanted.
Anyway, his base was the Lipton Onion Soup Mix and the Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup.
My experience with my slow cooker, while limited, has been mostly unsuccessful. I find everything is bland. I’m sure I’m not using a good recipe. I love my cast iron dutch oven because I can sear the meat and brown the veggies before adding liquid and putting it in a low oven.
Give me some good slow cooker recipes! I did see the pot roast above. Maybe the soup mix adds the flavor I have been missing…
One of the coolest aspects of a crock pot is how simple the recipes can be. Want good beef sandwiches with only 2 ingredients? 3 pound or so beef roast, 2 medium sized or 1 large sized jar of pepperoncinis. That’s it.
Remove the pepper stems, pour the juice and peppers on top of the roast.
8 hours on low. If you’re home, the meat can be shredded a little after 4 or 5 hours.
If you’re not home, that’s cool too. Shred the meat when it’s done, and add to rolls. (Toasted, cheesed, and garlic’d if you please.)
The recipe can be fancied up, and complicated if you want, but it also works the simple way.
You can sear the meat and brown the vegetables in a cast-iron frying pan before putting them in the slow-cooker and adding the liquid you used to deglaze the pan.