Talk:Slow cooker

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[edit] Where does one complain when an entry is utterly and totally wrong?

The generic crock pot is NOT an electrical device. Electric heaters have been added to them in recent decades but they've been used on woodstoves and low fires at least back into the 1800s and probably before that. The brand name "Crock-Pot" is an electrical device made by Rival. Being metal it isn't even really a crock pot, but just an electric slow cooker.Notice the hyphen. You can't trademark a generic term so they added a hyphen. This article needs re-writing from beginning to end. It is so full of errors that it has no business being in even a "free" encyclopedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.175.107.101 (talk) 18:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Botulinum tox

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

[edit] 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. [citation needed] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)