Design
A basic slow cooker consists of a lidded round or oval cooking pot made of glazed ceramic or porcelain, surrounded by a housing, usually metal, containing an electric heating element. The lid is often of glass seated in a groove in the pot edge; condensed vapour collects in the groove and provides a low-pressure seal to the atmosphere. The contents of a crock pot are effectively at atmospheric pressure, despite the water vapor generated inside the pot. A crock pot is quite different from a pressure cooker and presents no danger of an abrupt pressure release.
The ceramic pot, or 'crock', acts as both a cooking container and a heat reservoir. Slow cookers come in capacities from 500 ml (16 oz) to 7 liters (7.4 US quarts). Due to the placement of heating elements (generally at the bottom and often also partway up the sides), there is usually a minimum recommended liquid level to avoid uncontrolled local heating.
Many slow cookers have two or more heat settings (e.g., low, medium, high, and sometimes a "keep warm" setting); some have continuously variable temperature. A typical slow cooker is designed to heat food to 77 °C (170 °F) on low, to perhaps 88-93 °C (190-200 °F) on high. Many recipes that include sauce or liquid will reach the boiling point around the edges, while food in the center remains gently cooked. This may be because slow cooker settings are based on wattage, not temperature.
Read more about this topic: Slow Cooker
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)