crock pot cooking

[Anonymous]

I would like to use my crock pot more, so dinner will be ready, or almost ready when we get home. However, I do not feel comfortable leaving it on when we are not home. How do other people do it? Let it cook overnight, and then just re-heat when you get home? Cook on the weekend, and re-heat? TIA

[Anonymous]

I let it cook while I am out of the house. It was designed for this specific purpose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I let it cook while I am out of the house. It was designed for this specific purpose.

This

[Anonymous]

Same as above posters. It's so nice to come home to a nice meal and the house smells fantastic.

[Anonymous]

I leave mine on the middle of my ceramic cooktop. If it did go down in flames, there is nothing to support it.

That being said, a slow cooker never gets hot enough to really support combustion (fire), and for the type of cooking you need lots of liquid anyway, so burning is highly unlikely.

The prospect of coming home to red wine braised short ribs ripped any doubt out of me.

[Anonymous]

It is perfectly safe to leave the crock pot on while you are away. Like PP said, the crock pot was designed for this purpose! Nothing to worry about.

[Anonymous]

I only use it when i am home.

[Anonymous]

I am the same way, OP. Or the recipe calls for cooking for 6 hours, but I'm out of the house for 8 or 9, so leaving it on while I'm at work still wouldn't work. So I will cook it at night, sometimes doubling it up (so if it says cook on low for 8 hours, I will cook on high for four hours). Then reheat the next day.

[Anonymous]

I've been crockpotting for years now, and I generally don't do it while I'm at work, although not for safety reasons. I reheat. Lots of things do better with an overnight in the fridge, anyway.

I mostly let it go overnight--I don't have time in the mornings to prep. For tough meats, I also like to let them cook for 12+ hours, so I'll set it on around 4pm on a Sunday and turn it off Monday morning.

[Anonymous]

The first time, while I was home, mainly to see what the dog would do (if she would get excited by the smell and try to get to it - she did not).

Now, yes, I use it when I am at work, otherwise, I'd just cook the food the normal way. I did buy one with a timer, so I could time the food to cook a certain amount of time and go to warm.

I also tend to prep them the night before and put in the fridge. I know some people say this is bad. I don't really see much difference between that and pulling food from the fridge to fill in the bowl. I do let it sit for 20 minute between fridge and turning it on, so it doesn't have a large temp change immediately. So far, no cracked pots.

[Anonymous]

Thermal cooking pot. All you do is heat the inner pot with your ingredients on the stove top for 10-15 minutes and place that pot inside the thermal shell. At that point, you are done and there is no power use. Leave, come back and eat. Zojirushi makes a really good one(hold heat for a long time).

[Anonymous]

I leave mine on a cutting board just in case it were to somehow damage the counter (though it's unlikely).

[Anonymous]

I put mine on our glass cook top. I remember sharing your concerns a few years ago and tried to find circumstances where a crock pot caused a house to burn down, and Google could not find anything.

[Anonymous]

I use mine when I'm not home, with a time setting so it will kick to warm after the required cooking time. Overnight wouldn't work as it would still be hot when I put it in the fridge.

[Anonymous]

What about leaving your fridge on all day OP? Although actually I know someone whose fridge caught on fire...