If you're considering a benchtop cooker that makes your dinner prep easier, there are plenty of options, including slow cookers, multi-cookers and pressure cookers. But what do they all do, and how are you supposed to decide which one to buy? For a little bit of planning and a few minutes' prep in the morning, you can be rewarded with the tantalising smells of a hearty slow-cooked meal bubbling away all day, and a melt-in-your-mouth meal come dinnertime.
It's easy to see why slow cookers are a firm favourite with a wide range of home cooks. Foods cooked in a slow cooker are great for batch cooking and freezing, plus you can use cheaper cuts of meat and stretch out meals with legumes. These versatile gadgets have the ability to slow cook and pressure cook food, giving you options for last-minute meals as well as unctuous braises that blip away on the benchtop all day.
In other words, they can give you the best of both worlds. These appliances can help you smash out dinner in under an hour. These types of cookers use moist heat to slowly cook the food within.
Notice that slow cookers cook slowly while pressure cookers typically are used for fast cooking. What you will find is the same is that both of these have a heating element that holds a pot and is covered with a lid. These cookers have a ceramic or porcelain pot that is set into the heating element. The manner in which the pot is heated i. They come in varying sizes as well. Most slow cookers have a high and a low setting with no specific temperature adjustment.
Typically, low is somewhere around degrees Fahrenheit while high is around degrees Fahrenheit. Many slow cookers also offer a warm option. These cookers cook in a continuous method when on. Some models offer timer features that allow you to cook for a certain number of hours and then switches off or to warm.
If you get really fancy, sometimes you can even set them to start cooking at a specified time. Interestingly enough, you can make a lot of similar foods in the slow cooker and the pressure cooker.
But, a lot of creativity has been put to use with the slow cooker and you can make so many different things. Here are a few ideas of some popular slow cooker meals that you just might need to try. These are just a few common things that work well in the slow cooker. There are so many things you can make! Just as we did with pressure cookers, we wanted to share with you some of our favorite slow cooker options.
Again, these are not detailed reviews, just a simple list of our top 3 picks and a basic overview of each one. The most notable difference in these kitchen tools is the method in which your food is cooked.
The pressure cooker uses steam pressure while the slow cooker simmers the food within on low heat. The pressure cooker will cook meals quickly while the slow cooker cooks the meal over several hours. Both have various settings and functionality that allow you to manage the functions of the tool. Many of the newer models of pressure cookers offer a slow cooker option. To be clear, this does not mean that it will cook your food like a slow cooker but rather that it slows the cooking process overall.
Slow cookers do not have pressure cooker functionality in any way. We hope you find this guide to understanding the differences between slow cookers and pressure cookers to be a valuable resource. A slow cooker does not require water but you may want some type of moisture.
A pressure cooker will require water or liquid for the process. Hey, I'm Jaron and I'm a self-proclaimed food expert and author of this website! I'll be honest with you, I started this website because someone told me I couldn't and I needed to prove them wrong. Along my journey, I actually really fell in love with writing about food. I hope you found value from whatever article you read, and if you have any remaining questions, don't hesitate to contact me!
The time it takes for a dish to cook in an Instant Pot depends on the recipe, the method you're using to cook, and how much food you're making. But s ince the Instant Pot is a pressure cooker, foods typically cook at a much faster rate than they might in a slow cooker, so you might want to keep a closer eye on your food. According to the Instant Pot website, the appliance can cook a lot of foods in less than 30 minutes. For example, as per the site, you can cook fresh asparagus in one to two minutes or wild rice in 20 to 25 minutes, although the serving sizes of these dishes are not specified.
This appliance can also be used to cook dishes for a longer period of time — the Instant Pot has a slow-cook setting that allows you to set your cooking time for up to 20 hours. But, as a note , many websites like Pressure Cook Recipes and Taste of Home , advise that you do not leave your Instant Pot unattended while it is in use.
That being said, Instant Pot's user manual only advises that you don't leave the appliance unattended during its preheat cycle. The brand has also noted that the appliance has multiple safety features in place, including a lid that will not open while the Instant Pot is pressurized and a small vent that allows some of the steam to be released as food cooks.
When it comes to using this cooker, you can set the device to whichever temperature setting is required for your recipe and let it cook low and slow for a long period of time. The appliance can cook food at a consistently low or high temperature and keep food warm for multiple hours.
As a bonus, the slow, simmering method of cooking used by the Crock-Pot slow cooker is known to help dishes become extra flavorful. Some models of the manual Crock-Pot slow cooker are outfitted with a locking lid, but it shouldn't be locked during the cooking process — the locks are actually meant to be used when you transport dishes so that nothing spills out of the pot.
Unlike the Instant Pot, this electric slow cooker doesn't necessarily need water or steam to cook food — but to cook food properly, the manual encourages the user to put enough ingredients in the Crock-Pot in order to fill it at least half-way, although this depends on the recipe you're following. Read More: 15 things you didn't know you could make in a Crock-Pot. And, according to Crock-Pot, this slow cooker can be left unattended for extended periods of time when it is on a countertop.
But, according to Kitchn , you'll want to follow a few safety precautions when leaving your Crock-Pot slow cooker unattended, like leaving the appliance on a heatproof surface or keeping the heat setting on low.
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