Since the start of lockdown, almost a year ago, I’ve been working at home and used more slow-cooked recipes for our evening meals. I like being able to do the preparation during my lunch break, and then leaving the slow cooker to do its work, so that when I’m done all I need to do is serve (or quickly cook some carbs, like pasta). Not having to do lots of food preparation at the end of the day is nice.
Originally we had a very basic slow cooker. Ours was old – inherited from a grandparent – but similar models are still on sale today. The most basic just heat at one setting once plugged in; this one was slightly more advanced in that it had three heat settings, but that was it.
Nowadays, you can buy ‘multi-cookers’. These are devices that combine several different modes; as well as slow cooking, they will also offer a sauté mode and perhaps even a pressure cooking mode. We have an Instant Pot, which is the brand leader, but others are available. Crockpot, who are best known for slow cookers, have also branched out into multi-cookers as well.
So what makes a multi-cooker more useful? I’m going to go through some of the key features, which I think you should look out for when buying your next slow cooker or multi-cooker.
Sauté mode
Quite a lot of slow cooker recipes actually require you to do some pre-cooking – especially those involving meat, where you often need to brown it off before starting the slow cooking process. Sauté mode allows you to do the frying stage in the multi-cooker itself, rather than using a separate frying pan. This cuts down on the washing up and mess, and also means that the inner pan of your multi-cooker is already warm when you start. Some newer slow cookers that don’t offer a sauté function have inner pans that can be used on a regular hob, which achieves a similar result.
Timer
As mentioned, our basic slow cooker did not come with a timer. Of course, you can use an external timer, or even a timer switch to cut the power after a time to stop your food being overcooked. But the main advantage of having a built-in timer is that, once the time is up, the cooker will go into a ‘keep warm’ mode until you’re ready to serve. This should avoid over-cooking but also prevent your food from getting cold if you’re running late.
Delayed start
Building on this is delayed start mode. Let’s say you have a recipe that should be slow cooked for 6 hours, but you leave the house at 8am and aren’t back until 5:30pm. Delayed start allows you to prepare your ingredients and place them in the slow cooker before you go, and then have the slow cooker start at, say, 11:30am, so that when you are back six hours later the meal should be ready. It’s a useful function and not all slow cookers offer it – even those with timers.
Using an Instant Pot as a slow cooker
As mentioned, we have an Instant Pot, and slow cooking is one of its modes (as is sauté). It’s worth taking a couple of minutes to read how an Instant Pot can be used as a slow cooker, because although it offers low, medium and high settings, the low setting essentially only keeps food warm and doesn’t really cook it. Even the ‘more’ (high) setting is probably closer to ‘medium-high’ on a dedicated slow cooker.
The Instant Pot is, first and foremost, a pressure cooker. If you are going to use it regularly as a slow cooker, then I would advise buying a glass lid for it, rather than using the provided pressure cooker lid. Instant Pot sell an official one and it’s available from the usual places.
The other advantage that we have found is that because our Instant Pot has a bigger inner pot, we don’t encounter issues with liquids running over. But a larger slow cooker would also not have this issue, so it’s not a specific advantage of the Instant Pot.
