Slow Cooker

Overview

A slow cooker cooks at a low, steady temperature for many hours, simmering tough cuts and stews to tenderness with little attention. It uses a removable stoneware crock seated in a heated metal well, capped by a glass lid that lets the cook watch without lifting it. The structure is the Outer Housing, which carries the well, controls and feet.

How it works

The cooking heat comes from the Heating Well. Rather than a single hot plate, a resistance heating element is wrapped around the sides of the aluminium well, so heat enters the glazed stoneware crock from all around its lower wall. The thick ceramic spreads and stores that heat, holding the food at a gentle, even simmer well below a hard boil and avoiding the scorching a direct burner would cause.

Temperature is set, not measured, in a slow cooker: the low and high settings simply switch the element to a lower or higher steady wattage, and the food climbs to and holds an equilibrium temperature determined by that power and the crock's heat loss. On programmable units the Control Assembly manages this electronically, with the Control Board running the low, high and keep-warm modes and a countdown timer that drops to warm when the cook finishes.

The tempered glass Glass Lid Assembly traps moisture, which condenses and drips back to baste the food, so liquid is conserved over long cooks; some models add a Locking Lid Clip gasketed clip so the lid locks down for transport. Because everything runs at low power for long periods, the appliance is undemanding electrically and the stoneware crock lifts out for serving and washing.