This is my most favorite of the lot! KitchenAid 7-Quart Stainless Steel Slow Cooker is the best slow cooker I’ve worked with. This slow cooker review will help you why I think so. In my line of business, food preparation matters. A lot. And I’ve had experience with great slow cookers, and some not so great ones. And when it comes to my family, I’m even pickier because I only want the best for them.

KitchenAid 7-Quart Stainless Steel Slow Cooker

This is simply the best slow cooker of them all. It meets my family’s needs and my own. Whether we’re making beef chili for home consumption or I’m making consommé at the restaurant, this baby performs each and every time. I have a large family, so I like its huge capacity of 7 quarts. The 10-hour programmable timer helps me design the perfect cooking style for specific dishes, e.g. you wouldn’t roast chicken the same way you make beef stew, correct?

My wife loves our KitchenAid 7-Quart Stainless Steel Slow Cooker at home, which is brick red and matches our other kitchen appliances. Women. Go figure, right? The one at the restaurant is the classic steel although there is a black version as well. I personally think it’s very well designed for a slow cooker, which is why I like to use it so much. It is oval, which is great for cooking chicken.

Most slow cookers are round and cannot accommodate a whole chicken. Besides that, there are quart marking on the interior. I like the markings because they help me fill it with liquids accurately. We trust our kids around this model because the large handles and rugged design prevent any damage to it and our children. Large handles always help when you’re carrying a heavy pot of liquid, don’t you think?

Basically, if you need a large capacity slow cooker with good features and performance and don’t mind the hefty price tag, KitchenAid 7-Quart Stainless Steel Slow Cooker is the best slow cooker to get. I can personally attest that it has blown me away! If you’re not sure, check out my other slow cooker reviews to look for another model suitable to your needs.

P.s. The warranty’s good too. If it spoils during your first year of usage, KitchenAid will deliver an identical or comparable replacement free of charge to you. On top of that, there’s a one-year warranty on the replacement unit as well. Now that’s what I call a great warranty.

Further information:

• KitchenAid 7-Quart Stainless Steel Slow Cooker

Related Posts:

• Best Slow Cooker – Main
• Rival SCVI600B-SS Crock-Pot 6-Quart Premium VersaWare Slow Cooker
• Best Slow Cooker – Top Picks
• Chef Peter’s Guide to Slow Cookers: What do I look for when I want to buy a slow cooker?

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Compact slow cooker

Cuisinart CSC-400 4-Quart Slow Cooker

This is another one of my slow cooker reviews. I on occasion, had to use this Cuisinart CSC-400 4-Quart Slow Cooker at a friend’s place. He’s single and we were watching football.

Now football and tacos and beef chili go together like a match made in heaven. This slow cooker fit him really well because of its compact size and basic features. He’s a bachelor and not much of a foodie, so he just throws stuff in the morning, and comes home to a hot dinner whenever he has a night home.

I have noticed that slow cookers work best when they are at least half full of food to ensure that the liquid won’t cook the food to fast, and overcook it. Especially when you’re cooking meat, you don’t want it to be overcooked as it entirely loses its flavor and takes on a “raggy” texture entirely unpleasant to the palate.

This Cuisinart CSC-400 4-Quart Slow Cooker fits the bill for couples or singles living alone because they can’t possibly need such a large capacity slow cooker anyway. The 8-hour timer works a charm and has high, low and warm settings. While it isn’t programmable, it does have a keep warm feature, which will turn itself on automatically when cooking time has ended. It’s easy to clean because you can just put it in your dishwasher when you’re done with it.

The only drawback I can find to this small, basic slow cooker is that it is slightly more expensive in comparison to other slow cookers. Nevertheless, Cuisinart is a highly respected brand in the culinary industry and they have come up with a quality product once again.

I personally recommend this performer of a slow cooker to smaller households looking for a slow cooker that will consistently perform well and produce great food.

Further information:

• Cuisinart CSC-400 4-Quart

Related Posts:

• Best Slow Cooker – Main
• Proctor Silex 33015 1.5-Quart Round Slow Cooker
• Hamilton Beach Programmable Slow Cooker
• Corningware 6-Quart Programmable Slow Cooker – Best Basic Slow Cooker

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Best Basic Slow Cooker

Corningware 6-Quart Programmable Slow Cooker

This is another one of my slow cooker reviews. When I was starting out and exploring slow cookers, this was my first model. I couldn’t commit to a more expensive model yet because I didn’t know how much I would be using it. You guys know how you can buy a really cool kitchen appliance one day and use it for a few weeks but stow it away somewhere and not use it ever again, right? Well, that’s what I thought would happen to this slow cooker.

However, with my Corningware slow cooker, I realized how convenient using a slow cooker can be. This Corningware slow cooker review is therefore about the features of a basic slow cooker, which is a great starting out model for novices to slow cooking techniques.

For such a basic model, it comes with lots of useful accessories. Notably, I enjoyed the cookbook that came included. I tried the recipes on friends during potlucks where I’d carry the whole slow cooker to the party in the included insulated nylon carry bag (also a total bonus in my wife’s opinion) and serve my dish using the removable insert. It was easy to use and very easy to clean up.

My only gripe with this Corningware Programmable 6-Quart slow cooker is that I can’t program it as much as I want within the 10-hour cooking timer. However, this setback is minor considering the value for money this basic slow cooker brings to the table. Nevertheless, my friends loved the lamb stew I came up with.

Mine is currently being happily utilized at a friend’s place because I gave it to him when I bought my KitchenAid slow cooker. He and his wife love it!

Further information:

• Corningware 6-Quart Programmable

Related Posts:

• Best Slow Cooker – Main
• Hamilton Beach Programmable Slow Cooker – Best Value Slow Cooker
• Best Slow Cooker – Top Picks
• Chef Peter’s Guide to Slow Cookers: What do I look for when I want to buy a slow cooker?

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Congratulations! You’re finally deciding on buying a slow cooker. I’ve been there and done that. You don’t know how to start, between you and me, all that mumbo-jumbo about cooking program times; programs, handles, and quarts are enough to make anyone want to give up on slow cooking. But don’t worry, I’ll give you the lowdown on what you should be looking for so that when you read my best slow cooker reviews, you won’t feel like I’m talking in another language altogether.

Below are my personal guidelines, the 3 S-es to buying a great slow cooker that will fit your needs to a T:

Size
Quarts basically denote the size of your slow cooker. In the metric system, one quart is approximately 1 liter of liquid. The more quarts your slow cooker can hold, the more you can cook. This will depend on how many people you have to feed in your household. I chose a 7-quart slow cooker because I have a family of five and a large slow cooker fits my needs.

Shape
The shape of your slow cooker will help determine your decision as well. My personal opinion is that oval slow cookers are better than the round ones because you can actually cook whole birds of chicken in them. Imagine making roast chicken in your slow cooker? Yum.

Besides that, check out the other parts of a slow cooker’s anatomy. Are the handles sturdy? Is the lid see-through? That’s very important, so you can check on your food without lifting the lid and causing moisture to escape. If you’re very busy, which most of us are, make sure that your new slow cooker is easy to clean too!

Settings
The main reason for buying a slow cooker is to have the ability to cook great-tasting food unattended for long hours. Therefore, the settings of your slow cooker are paramount. Check out the timer. Is it digital or analog? Digital is generally more accurate. What about temperature settings? It should have at least three, low, medium and high.

Ask about a keep warm mode. Keep warm mode keeps your food warm even after you have finished cooking it. Settings are important. The basic slow cooker should have at least those, and the more advanced (and expensive) ones might even be programmable with manual modes for optimum food quality.

I hope this has helped you in your decision-making process. You can now proceed to my best slow cooker reviews, and I hope you’ll find something you like!

Related Posts:

• Best Slow Cooker – Main
• Best Slow Cooker – Top Picks
• KitchenAid 7-Quart Stainless Steel Slow Cooker – Best Slow Cooker
• Corningware 6-Quart Programmable Slow Cooker – Best Basic Slow Cooker

Tags: Slow Cooker Guide // Add Comment »

More people who work long hours yet still want the home cooking meals are using slow cooker to cook simpler food by throwing all the food ingredients into slow cooker in the morning and coming home to a hot home cooker cooking meal. Don’t you think this is nice?

What You Need To Know About Slow Cooker

Anyway, slow cookers are ideal for cooking soups and stews. But if you oven is occupied by another long-cooking dish, you can use slow cooker as another oven or burner. This helps.

While you using slow cooker to cook, it’s important to know that meats will not brown in the slow cooker, so any recipes requiring browned meat will need to brown the meat in a skillet before placing it in the slow cooker. This is something that you might want to know when you are using slow cooker to cook meat.

Besides that, it’s also helpful to know that slow cooker can’t use it for reheating because the slow cooker will cook gradually before hitting the cooking temperature, this give the bacteria the chance to grow, so don’t use slow cooker for heating.

Well, don’t keep your finished dish in the slow cooker for long either – it will continue to cook for a while and overcook the food. And as you know, the slow cooker will not stay hot enough to prevent bacteria growth.

Stay tuned to my Best Slow Cooker blog for more reviews of slow cookers to come!

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