Slow Cookers & Pressure Cookers

Slow cookers are a versatile and easy to use kitchen appliance that are great for cooking meals that benefit from retaining moisture, like stews, curries, casseroles, soups. They do a great job of cooking root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots and tough cuts of meat, leaving them tender and moist.

They’re designed to cook on a low, sustained heat throughout the day and because they cook slowly, with just a little bit of forward planning you will be rewarded with rich, hearty meals packed with developed flavours. Once you have prepared the ingredients and put them in the pot, you can walk away and let the slow cooker do its work.

Perfect for last-minute dinners, pressure cookers make slow-cooked meals fast. A slow cooked 7-hour meal might take just 45 minutes in a pressure cooker. The depth of flavour might not be quite the same and they require more supervision, but they are great for when you can’t start cooking meals like lamb shanks from the morning.

There’s also slow cooker and pressure cooker all-in-one appliances like the Breville pressure cooker and slower cooker, the Fast & Slow. Known as ‘Multicookers’, these appliances give you the best of both worlds. For more on these sort of benchtop cookers check out our Slow Multi Pressure Cooker Buying Guide.

Slow cookers can be used to prepare a variety of meat-based or vegetarian type meals. There are tonnes of slow cooker recipes you’ll love for delicious, set-and-forget meals you can come home to. They’re also handy for batch preparing a week’s worth of lunches like pulled pork burgers or beef fajita wraps made from beef brisket – basically any meat that benefits from a low, slow cook.

Slow cookers are simple appliances with low and high cooking settings.  Some cooks prefer to sear off meats first, however others swear by simply throwing all the ingredients in as they are and let the slow cooker do its thing. For the most flavourful results, consider browning meats, onions, garlic and other veggies in a separate pan before adding it to a slow cooker. Selected models come with a searing function, like some of the Sunbeam slow cookers or the Russell Hobbs slow cookers, so you’ve got less washing up to do. All models should have a Keep Warm setting.

If you are adapting a recipe that’s not written for a slow cooker you should reduce the water and stock quantity by about half. If your meal looks a little too watery as it nears serving time, use a colander to strain the liquid into a wide pan and reduce it over a high heat to thicken up the sauce before pouring it back into the slow cooker.

When comparing slow cookers and pressure cookers to using an oven or a cooktop, you will find slow cookers and pressure cookers are much more energy efficient when cooking the same meal. You will also find that your kitchen won’t get noticeably hotter using a slow or pressure cooker, like it would be when using an oven or cooktop.

When comparing the energy use of slow cookers and pressure cookers, even the most energy efficient slow cookers use more energy than a pressure cooker. There are two key reasons for this. Because pressure cookers can produce the same meals significantly faster than a slow cooker - an 8-hour meal in a slow cooker will be ready to eat in 45 mins in a pressure cooker – they will spend significantly less time being turned on in your kitchen. If you have it on less, it will consume less energy.

The other factor that makes pressure cookers so energy efficient is their insulation, which means less heat escapes and less energy is used maintaining cooking temperature.

Have a think about which cooking method you’re likely to use most, whether you want the speed of a pressure cooker, the hands-off simplicity of a slow cooker, or the versatility of a multicooker which allow you to do either. Some multicookers will even allow to bake a meal like the Philips multicookers, cook from hundreds of recipes with the Tefal Cook4Me, or even air fry foods with selected Nina Foodie multicookers.

Slow cooker settings are straightforward, usually with a control dial and some with an Auto setting for starting on a high temperature for quick heating and then automatically lowering the heat when the target temperature is reached. Pressure cooker and multicookers usually have a cooking timer displaying the time left before your meal is ready to serve. All should alert you when the cooking is finished.

Consider how easy the appliance is to keep clean after every meal. Is the cooking bowl easy to handle and will it fit in your sink or dishwasher? Many models, like the ones from Crockpot, have a dishwasher-safe pot and lid however always refer to the user manual to be sure. Also think about how much food you want to be able to cook and see if the quoted litre capacity will be sufficient and then consider your available bench and storage space.