Slow Cooker/Crock Pot in Argos for a Fiver

Thargor

http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/4228613/Trail/searchtext%3ESLOW+COOKER.htm

Half price, well worth it for a very handy thing to have in a kitchen imo, just fire the ingredients in and forget about them until dinner, this is just a small 2 litre one so it cooks for 2-3 people, might want to go bigger if you're feeding a family. It only uses 90watts so its very economical. Its Argos Value Range but its got hundreds of 5 star reviews on Argos UK:

http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/4228613/Trail/searchtext%3ESLOW+COOKER.htm

Cant go wrong for a fiver anyway, I got the Value steamer for 8 euro when someone posted that previously and its been used and abused by everyone in the house every day since then, one of my fave kitchen gadgets.

Thargor

Forgot to say, if you do want to go bigger theres a nice 3.5L one in Aldi this Thursday for 17.99:

http://aldi.ie/ie/html/offers/special_buys3_13435.htm

cgarrad

Thanks, Im going to make a few dishes with this, love that slo cooked beef stew.....

Here is a load of recipes.

Top 30

http://southernfood.about.com/od/crockpotrecipes/a/top_crockpot.htm

1600!! others

http://southernfood.about.com/library/crock/blcpidx.htm

Thargor

I just put an Irish stew in it 2 minutes ago, its feck all work for a full meal really.

Cheers for the recepies.

Placebo

can u make rice in this ?

Thargor

Yeah you can make rice and curries and noodles and anything basically, bear in mind everthing you do with these takes a few hours to cook. If you're having chicken and rice or beef and rice you can put the meat and the ingredients for the sauce in all at once and forget about it.

cgarrad

You all need to buy one of these, throw in a load of food, put the lid on and come back in 10 hours for a truly lovely meal.

Make a chef out of anybody, even me ;-)

Andrew33

cgarrad wrote: »

You all need to buy one of these, throw in a load of food, put the lid on and come back in 10 hours for a truly lovely meal.

Make a chef out of anybody, even me ;-)

10 hours???? FFS, I can do a fantastic stew/casserole/curry in my oven in 2.5 hrs. and trust me, after 2.5 hrs at 160 degrees, chicken and beef are as tender as anybody could possibly want. Absolutely melt in the mouth.

cgarrad

Fair enough but you literally walk away and leave it. Make it in the morning and have it for dinner.

Also I can cook for s_it but the casserole i made was great.

Also uses substantially less energy than an oven as its only 90w believe it or not!

Andrew33

cgarrad wrote: »

Fair enough but you literally walk away and leave it. Make it in the morning and have it for dinner.

Also I can cook for s_it but the casserole i made was great.

Also uses substantially less energy than an oven as its only 90w believe it or not!

Grrrr. 90 watts per what? per hour? per minute? per second? if somebody is using a slow cooker for 10hrs, it still adds up to a lot of energy used.
don't just accept figures you see in a magazine or on an ad. a vehicles battery is usually rated in Ah which is a measure of how much drain that battery can cope with in an hour, its time for "white goods" manufacturers to tell us how much their appliances actually draw over a typical 24hr period and stop this bull**** of fridges having a triple A rating provided they're never opened!

cgarrad

All consumer appliances are rated in watts per hour so it uses 900w in 10 hours.

Most ovens are about 2.5kw to 4kw.

Anyway just get one and you too will see the benefits:D

deisemum

I had one years ago and didn't use it much. I prefer doing a stew on the hob and steaming the potatoes on top or a casserole in the oven and doing baked potatoes at the same time.

I also utilise the oven at the same time.

If you're going out to work in the morning then it would be handy to come home to a dinner that's more or less ready.

mawk

Andrew33 wrote: »

Grrrr. 90 watts per what? per hour? per minute? per second? if somebody is using a slow cooker for 10hrs, it still adds up to a lot of energy used.
don't just accept figures you see in a magazine or on an ad. a vehicles battery is usually rated in Ah which is a measure of how much drain that battery can cope with in an hour, its time for "white goods" manufacturers to tell us how much their appliances actually draw over a typical 24hr period and stop this bull**** of fridges having a triple A rating provided they're never opened!

cgarrad wrote: »

All consumer appliances are rated in watts per hour so it uses 900w in 10 hours.

Most ovens are about 2.5kw to 4kw.

Anyway just get one and you too will see the benefits:D

wtf did I just read?
90W is NOT 900W in 10 hours. thats not how it works at all. 1W is 1 joule in one second. so 90W is 90J in a second or .324MJ in an hour. in ten hours this is 3.24MW which is just shy of 1KW/Hr or one "unit"

electric ovens usually have a 30amp fuse so logically about go to about 6KW or thereabouts.
lets call that 3KW cause we'd be cooking slowish. 2.5 hours at 3kw to make that cassarole is 7.5KW/Hr or seven and a half units. making the slow cooker 7 times cheaper to cook with than the crockpot.

to put this into real figures, i pay 14.1c per unit to the esb. this means 98c to use the oven and 14c to use the crockpot
[/power argument]

GreyAlien

Got one of these recently. Out of curiosity I measured how many watts the slow cooker uses per hour. I found it to be closer to 78-80W on high setting. On warm and low it was much lower. In the region of 30 to 45W. I guess 90W is the max potential the appliance could use.

deisemum

This size is too small for most families but the bigger one in Aldi is 200W and others of the same size use slightly more energy.

Zab

Andrew33 wrote: »

Grrrr. 90 watts per what? per hour? per minute? per second? if somebody is using a slow cooker for 10hrs, it still adds up to a lot of energy used.

A watt is a measure of power, not energy.

mawk wrote: »

wtf did I just read?
90W is NOT 900W in 10 hours. thats not how it works at all. 1W is 1 joule in one second. so 90W is 90J in a second or .324MJ in an hour. in ten hours this is 3.24MW which is just shy of 1KW/Hr or one "unit"

Just shy like 900W-h, eh?

The guy was basically right to begin with and there's no reason to bring joules into it. A 90 watt device left on for and hour will use 90 watt hours. Left on for ten it will use 900 watt hours, or 0.9KW-h. Handily enough, ESB charge by the KW-h. Of course, this is assuming the device is using a steady amount of power, which while the slow cooker might the oven certainly won't.

Thargor

I said it was 90w in the OP so people who werent clued up about power usage would still be able to realise that its using the same power as a lightbulb basically, which does make it very economical, especially if you're cooking for 2 and not just yourself.

You can make an amazing Irish Stew in this thing, just cut up a bit of lamb, some potatoes, some onions and a carrot and drop it into about 1/2 a pint of water with half an oxo cube and some Bisto stirred in and leave it on high for 7-8 hours, it makes a stew as good as anything you'd order in a restaraunt, I cant believe how good it tastes and I cant cook for sh1t unless the instructions are on the side of the packet.

cgarrad

mawk wrote: »

wtf did I just read?
90W is NOT 900W in 10 hours. thats not how it works at all.

Epic fail...

Instead of typing total rubbish just think a little before you start writing at all.

Also you have "cork which is the real capital" in your info.

More fail ;-)

Capitals use capitals btw...

unkel

Relax dudes

mawk was pretty spot on with his figures although nobody has yet correctly referred to the use of energy per time unit as kilowatt hour (kWh)

Zab

unkel wrote: »

Relax dudes

mawk was pretty spot on with his figures although nobody has yet correctly referred to the use of energy per time unit as kilowatt hour (kWh)

Heh, I think telling people to relax in fairly relaxed situations will generally have the exact opposite effect!

Anyway, the gist is that mawk's opening statement

mawk wrote: »

wtf did I just read?
90W is NOT 900W in 10 hours. thats not how it works at all.

Is incorrect. Although the terms were wrong, using 90x10 for 90W over 10h to make 0.9kW·h (= 900W·h) is exactly the calculation the average consumer should be using. He even says later that it "is just shy of 1KW/Hr" to hide the fact that his calculation came up with the same answer. There's no cause to bring joules into it unless you're trying to confuse people.

All this just means that the slow cooker is significantly cheaper to cook with than the average oven and the rest is probably for another thread. I'm also curious as to what they're like so I'm going to pick one up for a fiver.

Quackles

Yeah, don't really know how much energy it uses, but I do know this - I have a tasty beef stew waiting for me when I go home. Thanks, OP!

Bob Z

ok so who is right? do they use less or more electricity than ovens?

Thargor

Less, way way less, most people probably have 100w lightbulbs all over their houses, one of them is drawing more power than this thing.

http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/4228613/Trail/searchtext%3ESLOW+COOKER.htm

I see the sneaky cnuts have trebled the price in the new catalouge, glad I got one when I did, Ive made some awesome stews and bacon and cabbage in mine.