Saving Stress-Crockpots & Microwaves

[Charlaigne]

Australian here - by crockpot you mean slow cooker right?

I don't have a slow cooker but do have a microwave. It's useful to warm leftovers, melt chocolate and cook papadum and popcorn. The rest of our food is cooked using stovetop, oven or pressure cooker. My fave time-saving appliance is the pressure cooker. I would choose that over the microwave (which we only have because of my partner). Being suspicious and paranoid by nature, I am not 100% convinced microwaved food is healthy (but still eat it). I also find microwaved food falls short on taste (have eaten plenty of it over the last couple of decades). Partner's mother constantly extols the virtues of the microwave but I just don't care for microwaved food in general. Snobby me. But it is very useful for a few things as mentioned above, I wouldn't disagree.

I love, love, love my pressure cooker and would prefer it to a slow cooker. I personally think the pressure cooker is the best thing to happen in the kitchen world. Sorry to be difficult. I had planned to get a slow cooker but ended up getting the pressure cooker. My pressure cooker is not an Instant Pot, it's just a stainless steel stovetop Hawkins pressure cooker. It's great though. Don't know how I went without it. I don't need the slow cooker any more.

I read recently that foods cooked in a slow cooker taste like canned soup. Does anyone know if there's any truth in this? I have never eaten anything that has come out of a slow cooker. No one I know has one.

[Nichole Kurns]

Crockpots are the best thing I have discovered on my cooking journey. I love that I can put a meal in the crockpot and almost forget about it.
I rarely use a microwave.

[_claudi_]

I use more of microwave.

[Liveforchrist51]

My crockpot is a necessity! When you have several dinner guests, it is so much easier to make a crockpot meal of potato soup or roast instead of having to fit everything in the oven.