Slow cookers have a number of advantages in the kitchen. They’re low effort to cook with and economical to use. Cooking a dish in a slow cooker uses less power than using your oven for the same task. A slow cooker improves flavour, locks in nutrients and can make the most of cheap ingredients. Altogether, they’re one of the best small kitchen appliances for healthy, budget-friendly cooking. The Crock-Pot CSC046 has some nice features, including a glass lid, so you can see your food cooking and avoid the temptation to uncover it to peek inside and let out all the heat. It also has a black, dishwasher-safe stoneware inner bowl which you can lift out and serve from at the table. As you might expect at this price point, it’s a very straightforward appliance. It has the three heat settings that tend to come as standard in slow cookers (high, low and keep warm) but lacks some of the more advanced features that you’d find in more expensive models, like a timer and cooking pre-sets. Still, these aren’t essential to making good food in a slow cooker, as long as you’re happy to experiment and lean into the relaxed vibe of slow cooking. The only thing we’d caution is a 2.4 litre capacity slow cooker is categorised as small. It’ll have a usable capacity of less than two litres, so this appliance is really only going to work for 1-2 people. It’s definitely not family size. It has an aluminium pot, which we don’t like quite as much as the stoneware but it’s still dishwasher-safe. It also has the advantage of a hinged lid, so you don’t need to look for somewhere to land it when you’re serving up. Finally, if you need something to feed an entire family, or to batch cook food you can freeze and portion out over a week, Argos is selling the Crock-Pot 5.6 litre Time Select slow cooker for £69.99. It’s a bit more advanced than the smaller model above: it’s also got pre-set cooking programmes and a timer. You can find out more about it in our review. If you’d like to find out more about slow cooker benefits and features before deciding, check out our buying guide. Emma is Home Tech Editor at Tech Advisor. She covers everything from kitchen appliances to smart home devices, from floor care to personal care to air care technology. She’s particularly interested in environmentally conscious brands and products that save people time and money.
