Talk:Slow cooker

fire risk

Removed from the article:

A check of Usenet and News articles failed to find one article in which a crockpot started a fire. A minority seem to be frightened that the crockpot will cause a fire when they are not looking. The majority of responses point out that crockpots are designed for long hours of unattended cooking, that they leave appliances on all the time without incident, and that they have never had a problem with their crockpot. Many users report that burning food is nearly impossible as overcooking a stew merely turns it to an edible mush. The most likely source of a fire using a crockpot would be a shorting of the cord (a hazard with any electrical appliance that can be avoided using the right fuses and/or circuit breakers, not keeping mice or animals which chew cords in the kitchen and not testing out knives on said cord).

A proper risk analysis in re fire or other electrical problems would certainly include a review of anecdotal reports as here, but this is insufficient. ANY electrical appliance involving heat producing elements (and even some which do not as some failure modes can start producing heat even when not intended) can cause a fire. Without, in the case of wall current widgets, tripping fuses or circuit breakers. Consider a small (1 watt is sufficient in principle) lightbulb. In open air, it will likely not become too hot to touch. However, if the heat produced in normal operation is not radiated or conducted away sufficiently rapidly, the temperature of that light bulb will easily reach ignition temperatures for nearly all materials rather quickly. Fire risk from electrical sources is a twisty subject and difficult to discuss adequately without considerable context which is hard to include in an article on a cooking appliance.

I trust that explains the edit? ww 20:03, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Name

Would this not be better moved to slow cooker? — Pekinensis 19:23, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Done. — Pekinensis 23:41, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Negativity Bias?

This article seems to be negatively bias against slow cookers. A lot of the disadvantages mentioned for these devices such as vitamin leeching and overcooking are more true of other cooking methods than slow cookers. Also the point about items added during cooking needing time to fully cook is true of all cooking methods. Is it possible that article is bias?

used for...?

The description of the device is very thorough. Some instructions are included, the risks involved, and a comparison of the quality of recipes. But what the heck do you use this thing to cook? 59.112.47.44 08:54, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Benefits?

• A slow cooker, also called a Crock-Pot®, is a ... Definition
• Cooking in these appliances is done ... Explaination
• In use, the food is placed inside the pot ... Explaination
• The liquid and its proper level is important, ... Difficulties
• Recipes for these cookers must be adjusted ... Difficulties
• The slow cooker is also known as a Crock Pot, ... Legal and business issues
• The 'Crock Pot' name has been licensed to ConAgra ... Business issues
• Especially for plant materials (eg, vegetables), ... Problems
• Using a slow cooker, temperatures are lower ... Even worse problems
• If the starting food ingredients are frozen, ... Deadly serious problems
• Cooking legumes in a slow cooker at inadequate temperature, ... Life threatening problems
• Perpetual stews should not be maintained in slow cookers, ... Even more problems
• Because these cookers are portable/movable, ... Baby killing problems

Now please tell me, why do people buy slow cookers and why do people manufactur slow cookers? I consulted their official website. I find no such information either. -- Toytoy 17:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Simple but delicious stew that's ready when you get home from work. Isn't that worth all those issues, difficulties and problems? More seriously, I've added some sentences about this to the intro. Edit at will, of course. FreplySpang 23:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

A similar list could be prepared for almost any product, especially those involving electricity, heat, large mechanical power, heights, bodies of water lartger than a basin, many pets, or any of a wide variety of foods (eg, mushrooms, especially those collected in the wild). So your list is largely invariant across much of what humans encounter. The slow cooker, sensibly used, is a very useful cooking machine and produces excellent dishes for little time and effort. Only a bit of planning ahead. That's why they're used. ww 01:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

missing its debut record

According to familyfun.go.com, the first slow cooker debuted in the early 1970s. But I can't find the exact date yet. --Gh87 06:32, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction

Statement 1: "The Crock-Pot was invented quite by accident"

Statement 2: "Three men from Sedalia, Missouri, who spent much of their free-time building and racing stock-cars took a cooking crock and thermal conducting wire. They shellacked the wire to the crock, and attached a thermal switch and power cord, thus making the first "CROCK-POT"."

Statements 1 and 2 blatantly contradict each other. Unless you want to tell me that one guy went "WHOOPS! I just tripped and accidentally shellacked this wire to this crock here!" and then the next guy went "Oh crap, my hand just slipped and I soldered a thermal switch to the little bugger!" and then the third guy went "Whoa, I just coughed a power cord onto that thing! Let's call it a Crock-Pot!". JDS2005 08:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

That entire story was added by an anon account with no other edits[1], and it contradicts other sources. I'm pretty sure it was a hoax.--Dhartung | Talk 01:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Botulinum tox

Botulinum toxin is *not* heat stable. The statement on the page is confusing.

Myths

1. Someone has written, in the text as a remark, "Modern US slow cookers have a low setting of about 200°F and a high setting of about 300°F. This contradicts most of the rest of the article. It needs support or the article must be revised completely." This belongs here, in discussion, not in the text... but the fact is, water can't boil above 212° F. and the only way to increase the temperature in a slow cooker is to use it as a "dry space" like a miniature oven. Regarding recipes, there are thousands out there.Just Google slow cooker or crockpot. About.com/food/ has a huge range, so does foodnetwork.com, to name but two, and Amazon has recipe books for these cookers too. The irrational fears about the fire risk remind one of those associated with pressure cookers; urban myths. Properly used, these are both as safe as your TV or central heating. Slow cooking is not a case of mindlessly leave it till it goes to mush, but cook slowly till its done to perfection. All good cooking needs thought, planning and experimentation. Trevor H. (UK) 12:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Prescriptive information

We're running the risk of turning this isn't a guide, which isn't the purpose of the article. While I think the current edits are okay, we must be sure not to be seen to be providing advice on the use of the device. Wikipedia is not a guidebook or manual and its purpose is not to teach people how to use things or advise them in tasks. Chris Cunningham 12:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Electrical?

I disagree that a slow cooker is purely electrical. I have a ceramic one that's designed to go in the oven. Can we broaden the article out to include this? --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 15:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

The key to slow cookers is that the cooking temperature is closely controlled and low. a pot for use in an oven can't be so closely controlled, given the difficulties of temperature variation within an oven and the general sloppiness of thermostatic control for them. I'd think what you have is not actually a sloow cooker, regardless of what its maker claims it to be. ww (talk) 18:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a pot, designed to go in an oven, which cooks things slowly at a low temperature. My mum has used it since the sixties to cook things all day whilst at work. Her oven has a "slow cook" setting. The fact that she has done this successfully for forty years might go some way to suggest that what I have is a slow cooker, and that slow cookers do not have to be electrical. --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 06:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the temperature of an electric slow cooker is not closely controlled. The temperature is not controlled at all, except insofar as liquid contents boil instead of getting hotter, when they reach a certain temperature. I'm ready to see a counterexample, but so far every electric slow cooker I've seen simply delivers a constant, low, heat to the pot, with no regard to temperature. An electric oven, on the other hand, does contain a thermostat, so the temperature is somewhat controlled, albeit not to a great precision.

Still, I'd argue that a pot intended to go in the oven is not a "cooker". --Ukslim (talk) 17:56, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Such as in the traditional cooking of Lancashire hotpot? Whitebox (talk) 18:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Orignal crockpots were NOT electrical

This entire page needs to be re-written. As the old saying goes, it's "a crock of sh_t". The first crockpots were purely ceramic non-electric affairs which were designed to be used with almost any source of low heat. More often than not they were used over a low fire in a wood stove.They were common in the American South many decades before electricity even came into being there. They were always called "crock" or "crockpot"Years later (1970s maybe?)they started to hit the stores with a built-in electric heat source and a thermostat. It is the POT that's the important part, not how it's heated. An encyclopedia ought to tell people about the device as it has been historically used, not how it was found in K-Mart a few hundred years later. -dwargo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.175.107.101 (talk) 18:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Since I don't patrol talk pages much, I've only just noticed this. The anon poster has a good point which should probably be reflected in the article, but misses a point or two. The name 'Crock=pot' is trademarked, and is used in modern language to mean the electrical widget. I'd invite the poster to add an historical paragraph to the article reflecting this past usage of a related device. I'd also note that there is a kind of related water permeable crock used in some European cooking, also over extended cooking times if I recall correctly, but I can't seem to recover any special name for it. ww (talk) 17:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the premise of this discussion. I would like to read more about the predicesor to the electric slowcooker. My Czech girlfriend says her grandmother would cook meats over the night in a non-electric slowcooker. The electric cooker was an evolution on an older idea; what was that older idea? Vrana (talk) 19:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC) Vrana (talk) 19:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Some links added of non-electrical crocks, though many kinds of pots on a stable low heat source could do slow cooking, and you know trashing an article whenever there's an omission, mistake, or oversight would put a lot less useful information out there, and make for a lot of exhausted volunteers and contributors. Even if some new paragraphs are added, other work about electric slow cookers still applies. It sure seems like ceramic cooking pots were used many, many hundreds of decades before the American South as we now know it even existed. Also Dutch ovens and Cauldrons are two other kinds of pots that foods can be slowly cooked in if anyone was thinking of those. Whitebox (talk) 18:16, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

removal of safety section

The safety section added recently was removed without trace. Since slow cookers present different safety issues than a pot on top of a traditional stove, or a conventional oven, it seems to me that some comment on the subject is relevant. Did the editor who reverted think that the topic was irrelevant, or that it violated some sort of Wikipedia policy or style? No edit summary was left, so there is no information on the nature of the objection. Pleas discuss... ww (talk)

The edit summary contains a link to WP:NOT#HOWTO, which is the guideline being violated. Prescriptive content is inappropriate, which includes basically any use of the word "should". The section lacked any particularly informative content beyond the prescription, as it should be evident that no cooking appliance is immune from danger (especially around children and animals). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Can't agree wth the alleged violation of WP;Howto. Noting that explosives are dangerous and should be handled carefully is not such a violation; it's an inherent characteristic of them and fairly noted here. How to use them to take down a hillside for road construction is a different story. And in the case of the points made in the reverted safety section, there are different and not entirely obvious safety issues surrounding freestanding heavy and easily pulled off devices as opposed to heavy, not easily moved devices, even though both are similar in some ways. Comment? ww (talk) 06:03, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

We're here to describe the subject; if this is done correctly, there should be no need to add advice. The explosives example can be handled by saying "nitroglycerine is unstable and can explode if moved. For this reason, an elaborate set of safety procedures have been developed, which include:" or the like. Anyway, I've rescued those parts of the section which weren't advice, though it still needs sourced. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Recipies section

This section should be remade, it is very poorly written.

eco friendly slow cookers

I spotted an advert for a slow cooker that is being marketed as an ecofreindly way to cook. It seems plausible that lower temperatures, and good insulation overcome the longer cooking time. Maybe a section on this could be added. Here is a possible starting point for reference http://www.guardianecostore.co.uk/Guardian/product.aspx?topGroup=154&subCat=93&subGroup=4073 87.127.117.246 (talk) 18:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Temperature representation misleading

I found this page via Kidney Beans - where there is concern about toxicity of under-cooked beans related to insufficient temperatures associated with use of slow cookers. From various online searches, it is my understanding that the "High" setting on a modern slow cooker for 2 hours results in temperatures around 300 degrees Farenheight, which is well over the 100 degree Celsius minimum required for toxin decomposition. Currently, both articles are misleading (I will post a similar note on the 'Beans' page). I can't find an original source to document the temperature conversion. Any help is appreciated. Elitry (talk) 19:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

You've been totally misled; water boils at 212 F, and slow cookers do not boil food even on the high setting (except sometimes around the edge of the crock). See other discussions on this talk page about the temperature of slow cookers. Bigpeteb (talk) 05:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Low/high

The Crock-pot website says [2] that at least for their products there's no actual difference between the target temperature on low/high, just how long it takes to reach that temperature Nil Einne (talk) 16:56, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Disadvantages section: numerous errors

The disadvantages section needs a rewrite by somebody with a better understanding of biochemistry. There is a lot of vague language with regard to "nutrients," but the statements made do not apply to many/most substances conventionally considered nutrients.

Example: "Some vitamins and other trace nutrients are lost, particularly from vegetables, partially by enzyme action during cooking and partially due to heat degradation." What trace nutrients? Be specific. Minerals (usually what "trace elements" refers to) cannot be degraded by enzyme action or heat. Vitamins are degraded by heat, but are NOT degraded by enzyme action: they are cofactors in enzymatic reactions, which means they are not consumed. The information on blanching is correct about inactivating enzymes, but wrong about what those enzymes break down when not inactivated (ie. not vitamins). This is important, for instance, in retaining green colour of vegetables, by inactivating chlorophyllase.

207.6.210.161 (talk) 14:58, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Crackpot?

"Crockpot" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Crackpot.

However "crackpot" may be relevant. Who decided that slow cooking should redirect to slow cooker? Slow cooking is a method, while slow cooker is a device, with a somewhat misleading name. If cold food is put in these devices, they are indeed slow, keeping the food a long time at ideal temperatures for breeding bacteria, but when food is put in hot, it may (depending on the load, ambient temperature, individual cooker designs etc) be boiling to death before long. The 'design' section explains that the devices control power input, not temperature. The 'operation' section contradicts this with fanciful and completely unsustainable claims about the temperatures that food will reach.

Crackpot could also refer to whoever decided, way back, on the oven temperature descriptions seen on some ovens and many oven temperature conversion charts. If someone loaded an oven and set it to 'slow' or even 'very' slow, then went out to work, they could return to a burnt mess.

Having said that, ovens make excellent slow cookers, if run at a suitable low temperature (e.g. 85C, 185F). So do induction plates. In either case, I refer to the actual cooking temperature, rather than the setting which can be inaccurate.

Should 'flying' redirect to 'bird' or 'plane' or 'Superman'?

--Alkhowarizmi (talk) 08:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

cooking time for kidney beans

Italic textplease tell me how much time would it take to cook kidney beans kailashgauri 12/09/2014 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kailashgauri (talk • contribs) 13:01, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Toxins and slow cooking

As a note, I have heard that red beans like Kidney beans are not safe to be cooked in a slowcooker since they require soaking to remove toxins. This would need to be verified.— Preceding unsigned comment added by TangleUSB (talk • contribs) 02:54, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

This isn't specific to slow cookers in any way. You have prepare certain beans before cooking. Valgrus Thunderaxe (talk) 06:27, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Per the US Food and Drug Administration "Bad Bug Book" section on Phytohaemagglutinin (kidney bean lectin) (Page 255 of 292) https://www.fda.gov/media/83271/download

"Slow cookers should not be used to cook these beans or dishes that

contain them. Studies of casseroles cooked in slow cookers revealed that the food often reached

internal temperatures of only 75°C or less, which is inadequate for destruction of the toxin."

I am reverting the bean related hazard section in this article per cited US Food and Drug Administration's guidance. MoonOwl2010 (talk) 00:43, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

fire risk Myth

There is lots of talk and pop culture about slow cookers starting fires. Might be worth killing this myth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TangleUSB (talk • contribs) 02:54, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Poisoning concerns WRT to beans

This is nothing related to slow cooker's at all. That's just a property of beans, and regardless of how they're cooked, they need to properly prepared. Valgrus Thunderaxe (talk) 06:22, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, it is to the extent that slow cookers may not bring the food up to boiling temperature long enough. As I understand it, some slow cookers do have at least one cycle which keeps a high temperature for sufficiently long time. --Macrakis (talk) 02:15, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I have also read that some slow cookers reach the necessary temperature to denature phytohaemagglutinin. The FDA's official guidance is to not use slow cookers, so I think this should be mentioned in the article so people are aware of the concern. MoonOwl2010 (talk) 03:38, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Bean Poisoning again

This was added I assume in response to my concerns with the article -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.51.192.49 (talk) 05:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Slow cookers should not be used to cook dried kidney beans and other legume seeds.[10] These foods contain the highly toxic lectin phytohemagglutinin,[11] making as few as four raw beans toxic.[12] This lectin is only deactivated by long soaking, then boiling in fresh water at 100 °C (212 °F) for at least thirty minutes.[13]

This isn't any different than how one would prepare beans in any other type of cooking method, and isn't specific to slow cookers in any way. If you make beans on a stove in a pot, you'd do the same thing. 24.51.192.49 (talk) 05:43, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm the source of this post, BTW. I posted this not realizing I was logged out. Valgrus Thunderaxe (talk) 05:45, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

In media

Can someone create a reference about movies or shows where the device is important plot point? Like in "THis is Us". Gevorg89 (talk) 13:08, 18 November 2023 (UTC)