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Whether you want a casserole, stew, curry, pasta sauce, soup or a perfectly cooked cut of meat, you can make delicious meals without the fuss with a slow cooker. The best bit is that you can these appliances to prepare meals while you’re out. Just set it and forget about it. The Good Housekeeping Institute has rigorously tested 29 models to find the best slow cookers, and these are 12 of the top performers.
What can you cook in a slow cooker?
Slow cookers are nifty gadgets that can help you create amazing dinners with minimal prep and no need to hang over the hob for hours. They work by cooking at a steady and controlled temperature, and the lid locks in the moisture to produce soft and tender results. There’s a misconception that all you can make are stews and casseroles, but these are much more versatile appliance than many realise. They’re ideal for cooking a cut of meat. for example. Take our slow cooker ham, we use coca-cola to make this sweet and salty joint of meat, while our slow cooker beef joint is an absolute winner, and saves space in the oven. If you’re in need of inspiration, we’ve rounded up more than 45 of our favourite slow cooker recipes.
What are the benefits of slow cooking?
There are a number of benefits to using a slow cooker, with one of the main plus points being that it’s highly convenient. You won’t have to check and stir because the pot heats evenly and should never get so hot that the mixture catches. Cooking for a long time at a low temperature also helps to tenderise meat and bring out the flavour in foods, meaning you can get a lot of flavour out of less-expensive cuts of meat. Slow cookers use less electricity than using the oven too, and by avoiding cooking at high temperatures you can preserve nutrients that are sometimes lost when cooking with other methods.
Joint best slow cooker: Crock-Pot CSC052
Joint best slow cooker: Crock-Pot SCCPRC507B-060
Runner-up slow cooker: Sage by Heston Blumenthal The Fast Slow Pro
Best budget slow cooker: Judge Slow Cooker 1.5L
What is a good size for a slow cooker?
As a general guide, a 1.5 to 2.3-litre capacity is great for two people, a larger 4 to 4.5 litres will feed four, and 5.5 to 7 litres is good for a family of four to six. Unless you’re buying a slow cooker to serve meals for a large gathering or making meals ahead of time and freezing them, you won’t need anything over 7 litres.
How we test slow cookers
We test slow cookers at the Good Housekeeping Institute by using them to make a beef stew, chicken curry, and a vegetable soup, using both their high and low settings. We measure the amount of energy consumed while the slow cookers are on to work out whether they are economical, and the amount of moisture lost when cooking to make sure that the slow cooker doesn’t dry the food out.
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JOINT BEST SLOW COOKER
Score 91/100
With a generous 4.7L capacity, this slow cooker can cook enough to feed six people and the main pot can be removed to double up as a serving dish. This model scored full marks on our curry, soup, and stew tests, and cooked meat and vegetables to perfection. The hinged lid is a great addition as it allows you to stir or add to your dish without having to find somewhere to put the wet lid. The bowl and lid are both dishwasher-safe too, for extra convenience.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 4.7 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Two
Score: 91/100
This 220W slow cooker comes with a 4.7 litre removable ceramic inner pot, large enough for a meal to feed a family of six. It has the added bonus of an integrated programmable timer that’ll automatically switch to the ‘keep warm’ setting when it finishes cooking. The results didn’t disappoint at all. It scored highly when making curry, soup and stew, with meat and veg cooked to perfection. It’s easy to use and we like that the inner pot can be washed in the dishwasher.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 4.7 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Two
RUNNER-UP
Score: 88/100
This premium machine produced good cooking results and was very economical in use. It is a well thought-out multi-cooker with a useful range of pre-set settings, enabling you to cook a variety of foods without relying on guesswork to get the best results. The pressure-cook and slow-cook settings offer a useful range of food options with cooking times and temperature/pressure levels. You can even save your own settings in its memory too.We like how the ‘keep warm’ setting switches on at the end of cooking too. The only things we’d complain about are the fiddly hinged lid, and how it’s a bit bulky to store.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 6 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Stainless steel
Number of heat settings: Three
BEST BUDGET SLOW COOKER
Score: 85/100
This slow cooker is the perfect size for one or two person households. It was good for making soup and performed well in our beef in beer recipe test – both the gravy and soup were thick and rich. The only downside is the lack of indicator light, which would be useful, and we found water collects in the rim and occasionally spits. Overall though, this is a compact model that performs very well.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 1.5 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Three
Score: 85/100
Fun, quirky and family-friendly, the chalkboard encasing makes it a stand-out appliance and would make any kitchen look homely. As well as being a brilliant novelty it also boasts a great performance score. It scored well when we made an aromatic, flavoursome chicken curry and a succulent beef stew. This would be ideal for someone who loves getting the family involved in cooking while also looking to buy on a budget.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 3.5 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Two
Score: 84/100
This is another model with a chalkboard design, and we think this is a creative way of letting the family know what’s for dinner. It also gave the cooker a stylish matte black finish, but the sticker leaves a residue which is a little difficult to remove. It performed quite well, especially when making chicken curry, but water collects in the rim and the bubbles shake the lid.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 3.5 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Three
Score: 83/100
This affordable slow cooker won’t disappoint, and it scored highly in all our tests. It cooked lovely and tender beef and chicken, and flavoursome veg. It’s easy to operate with three settings – low for simmering and slow cooking, high for faster cooking, and an auto setting to keep food at serving temperature. It has cool-touch handles and the 3.5 litre dishwasher-safe ceramic pot is topped with a glass lid, so you can see what’s going on during cooking.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 3.5 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Three
Score 82/100
A must-have for those looking to only cook small portions, this Russell Hobbs slow cooker produces some good results. On our beef stew and chicken curry tests, the meat was well cooked, though the sauce could have been reduced a little more. This model barely uses any energy when on, for which it scored full marks. A great option for those with only two or three people in the household.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 2 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Three
This slow cooker did well with the recipes we tried. We saw the best performance with the chicken curry, as it had the least moisture loss. We found the chicken remained succulent and really flavourful. The slow cooker also did well in our soup test, but we found that the some of the ingredients could’ve been cooked a bit better. When it came to the stew, we didn’t get as great a result from the machine as the beef was chewy and some of the ingredients didn’t have any flavour.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 3.5 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Three
Score: 81/100
We achieved the best results when using the auto setting on this slow cooker, which cooks on high first and then reduces automatically to the low setting for the remainder of the cooking time. The beef stew took six hours to cook and meat and vegetables were tender and moist. Results using the other two settings were not as good but still acceptable. It was extremely energy efficient, scoring top marks on all settings.
Key Specifications
Capacity: 1.5 litres
Pot: Ceramic
Lid: Glass
Number of heat settings: Three
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