Best Slow Cookers 2011-2012

Best Slow Cookers 2011-2012 - Here you will find the information & review about slow cookers such as top rated programmable slow cookers, best budget slow cookers, list of the most popular slow cooker and list of the best rated in slow cooker based on amazon customer reviews.
Hopefully after reading this lens you will have all the information needed to go a head and buy one of these slow cookers with confidence.

A slow cooker, Crock-Pot (a US trademark that is often used generically), or Slo-Cooker (a UK trademark that is often used generically) is a countertop electrical cooking appliance that maintains a relatively low temperature compared to other cooking methods (such as baking, boiling, and frying), for many hours allowing unattended cooking of pot roast, stew, and other suitable dishes.

Advantages of Slow cooker
Cheaper cuts of meat with connective tissue and lean muscle fibre are suitable for stewing, and tastier than stews using expensive cuts,as long slow cooking will soften the connective tissue without toughening the muscle. Slow cooking leaves the gelatinised tissue in the meat, so that it may be advantageous to start with a richer liquid.
The low temperature of slow-cooking makes it impossible to burn food even if cooked too long; however, meat and vegetables will become nearly tasteless or "raggy" if overcooked.
Food can be set to slow-cook before leaving for the day, and will be ready on return. Some models include timers or thermostats which bring food to a given temperature, and then lower it. With a timerless cooker it is possible to use an external timer to stop cooking after a set time, or both to start and stop.
Cooking the meal in a single pot reduces washing up, and the low cooking temperature and glazed pot make cleaning easy.

Disadvantages of Slow cooker
Some vitamins and other trace nutrients are lost, particularly from vegetables, partially by enzyme action during cooking and partially due to heat degradation/evaporation. When vegetables are cooked at higher temperatures these enzymes are rapidly denatured and have less time in which to act during cooking. Since slow cookers work at temperatures well below boiling point and do not rapidly denature enzymes, vegetables tend to lose trace nutrients. Blanched vegetables, having been exposed to very hot water, have already had these enzymes rendered largely ineffective, so a blanching or sauteing pre-cook stage will leave more vitamins intact. This is often a smaller nutrient loss than over-boiling and can be lessened to an extent by not removing the lid until the food is done.

Raw kidney beans, and to a lesser extent some other beans (such as broad/fava beans), contain the toxin phytohaemagglutinin, which is destroyed by boiling for at least ten minutes, but not by the lower temperatures of a slow cooker, so dry beans must be boiled prior to slow cooking to avoid poisoning. Even a few beans can be toxic, and beans can be as much as five times more toxic if cooked at 175 °F (80 °C) than if eaten raw, so adequate pre-boiling is vital. Cases of poisoning by slow-cooked beans have been published in the UK; poisoning has occurred in the USA but has not been formally reported.

Slow cookers do not provide sufficient heat to compensate for loss of moisture and heat due to frequent removal of the lid, e.g., to add and remove food in perpetual stews, (pot au feu, olla podrida). Added ingredients must be given time to cook before the food can be eaten. If food is allowed to cool below about 158 °F (70 °C) and not reheated, harmful bacterial growth is possible; some bacteria produce toxins or spores which are not destroyed even by reheating.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia