Another inexpensive way to simmer a nice stew!

I remember during my mom time which is like 50 years ago, she would spend almost 8 hours just to simmer some stew in a clay pot over the charcoal fire, looking over the fire constantly so that the stew does not end up burnt. This was way back before the time when slow cooker made it ways to many kitchen in this part of world.

A slow cooker is basically used for cooking of food by simmering them at low temperature over many hours without any constant monitoring. The chinese use the slow cooker to make soups and simmering of chinese herbal concoction as it takes hour for the herbs to release their elements.

The inside of the slow cooker is basically made of ceramic pot to retain the heat over a long period of time and the heat in a slow cooker can be set to low, medium and high.Although many people thought the slow cooker simmering food for such long hour must have consumed a lot of electricity, the truth is using a slow cooker only consume 250 watts of power compared to simmering food in the oven which consume 4000 watts of power.

Ceramics pot inside of Slow Cooker

Other advantages of slow cooker is the cooking does not need constant monitoring which mean it can be left unattended for a long period of time and it saves time and effort. The meals is tasty because the long simmering caused the food to release their intense flavor. After each cooking using slow cooker, only the ceramics pot inside the slow cooker needed to be cleaned.

However there is one drawback of slow cooker, according to Wikipedia some vitamins and other trace nutrient particularly from vegetable is lost during cooking in slow cooker.This is due to enzyme action and heat degradation.

Slow cooker are also an inexpensive gadget which can be bought at below $100 and can last many years if well taken care off. My first slow cooker was bought 30 years ago and is still working like new.