My crockpot went kaput. Instead of throwing it away, I was wondering if I can use the inside part to bake things in the oven? Thanks in advance for any advice.
Crockpots don’t get as hot as the oven does for baking, 300-500 F., so I’d be hesitant to use crockpot innards in an oven because you don’t have any assurance the material will stand up to high heat.
We used ours as a flowerpot out on our deck.
I’ve done it, but offer no assurances that yours will be fine.
A general rule with any ceramic item is that you shouldn’t expose it to thermal shock, like taking it out of the fridge/freezer and putting it in a hot oven. The safest bet is putting a room temperature pot in a room temperature oven, and letting them heat up slowly, together.
I’ve put the crock in the oven, and even heated it on the stove. A ceramic container safe to use at 250F, is not going to suddenly fail at a slightly higher temperature.
Except when it does. There’s no way to know for sure with ceramics which can do interesting things when exposed to thermal stress. It may work fine; it may not.
Any ceramic container may fail under thermal stress at any time. But the crockpot manufacturer is going to provide something intended to withstand higher temps than just the supposed max for the crockpot. Higher temperatures might hasten an eventual failure, but the manufacturer wouldn’t chance using something that would readily fail at 500F.
The consenses seems to be Yes. And I’ll let the pot warm up along with the oven like GilaB suggests. If it explodes and I can’t even use it for a flower pot, well there’s always mosaics.
Thanks everybody.