Crock-Pot SCV655B Slow Cooker, Aluminium, 300 W, 6.5 liters, Black

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Does your slow cooker have good heat distribution? Some can suffer from hot spots that cause drying out in corners or at the base. Uneven heat is something that’s more likely to occur in larger bowls. You can activate a keep warm setting to keep your food ready for as long as six hours after your cooking mode has finished. The sear mode took only a few minutes to pre-heat and we were able to brown our onions before adding curry ingredients, which delivered a lot of extra flavour.The slow cooker's 'reduce' function was useful for bubbling away excess liquid after slow cooking. The controls are a little cluttered, but the illustrations make the Sage The Fast Slow Go easy to use and very clear. The lid his hinged, which we don't love, but it does mean the Sage The Fast Slow Go will transition easily between slow cooking and pressure cooking for a range of the cooking modes. Cook up a delicious and nutritious storm from our range of slow cookers. Alongside work and daily life tasks, cooking a fresh dinner from scratch can often feel daunting at the end of the day. A slow cooker is the perfect hassle-free way to make hearty meals whilst you’re at work or completing daily tasks. Ready to be eaten when you get home, as the slow cooker completes all the hard work for you - like magic!

The best slow cookers you can buy in 2023

The Ninja Foodi Multi-Cooker is certainly mighty, but if you like your gadgets it could be a great investment. You can of course just use this multi-cooker as a slow cooker, for which it has a generous 6 litre capacity, but you can also take advantage of the sear setting to brown meat and veggies before slow cooking for a more rich flavour.

Slow cookers range in capacity, from a compact 1.5 litres up to 7 litres. 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 ideal for four to six people. When you make a one-pot dish, you usually start by searing the meat or sautéing base ingredients such as onions and garlic. Most slow cookers don’t let you do this, but there are a few that do. Some, such as the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew Digital Slow Cooker 460015, simply have a metal pot that’s sturdy enough to heat on your own hob (gas or electric, not induction). With so many different slow cookers out there, choosing the right one for you can be confusing. Here are a few questions you might want to consider. Slow cookers range in size from a compact 1.5 litres to a 6.5-litre bowl, so be sure to choose the right size for the way you intend to cook. As a rough guide, 1.5-3 litres will feed one or two people, 3-5 litres, three or four people and anything over five litres should suit a large family, with six litres or more ideal for batch cooks who like to fill the freezer. Alternatively, a larger cooker is great for those who like to eat what’s leftover for lunch the next day. Basic slow cookers won’t get hot enough to sauté meat or vegetables, so you’ll need to do this in a pan before transferring the contents to the bowl. However, more expensive models offer a different one-pot solution. This can either be bowls that you use on your hob or in your oven in place of a pan (some will even be induction compatible). They will need to be moved to the slow cooker base. Machines with a sauté function for high-heat browning can simply be switched to slow cooking.By sealing food in pouches, the juices and subtle flavours that could otherwise be lost during conventional cooking are retained.

This function can be found on the majority of slow cookers, helping to retain the temperature of your food without cooking it further – handy when you’re struggling to round up the family! Slow cookers vary considerably, so follow your manufacturer's manual for guidelines on temperatures and cooking times. Traditionally, slow cookers use a large, ceramic casserole dish that’s slow to heat up and slow to cool down. These are heavy and will break if you drop them, but they hold their heat well so they’re lovely to carry to the table and serve from. Most slow cookers will have similar standard controls – high heat for meals cooked in less than a few hours, low heat for all-day cooking. A 'keep warm' mode should hold food at a serveable temperature without actually cooking it. Some cookers will switch to 'keep warm' automatically after an elapsed cooking time, while more basic models need this altered manually.They also calculate the energy consumed by each model to see how economical they are, and measure the moisture lost when cooking to ensuring your dinner won't end up dried out. This function starts your cooking off on a high setting before automatically reducing the temperature to the low setting for the remainder of the cooking time.