Modifying/using slow cooker for low temp. roasting

[Elliott]

Hi All!

This may seem silly to some, but has anyone tried using their electrical slow cooker/crockpot for slow roasting, as an alternative to setting a domestic oven to 53 degrees and roasting for 24 hours?

I'm sure there will be replies insisting that these small domestic appliances aren't accurate enough to hold that sort of temperature for such a long period of time, but maybe with a little thermostat and pid modification?

Any suggestions or input from those whom own these things will be of great assistance.

Cheers,

Elliott

[ray goud]

Hi All!

This may seem silly to some, but has anyone tried using their electrical slow cooker/crockpot for slow roasting, as an alternative to setting a domestic oven to 53 degrees and roasting for 24 hours?

I'm sure there will be replies insisting that these small domestic appliances aren't accurate enough to  hold that sort of temperature for such a long period of time, but maybe with a little thermostat and pid modification?

Any suggestions or input from those whom own these things will be of great assistance.

Cheers,

Elliott

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Have you looked inside any slow cookers? They do not have thermostats. They have very small cooking elements, like heating tapes, which are sized to warm up the calculated contents of the pots. The selector switches on the outside simply connect or disconnect different portions of the heating tapes to produce more or less heat output. This has been one of my pet peeves for some time, because I don't always use the amount of food for which a particular cooker is designed (usually less). When I do that, the appliance takes more or less time to cook than the recipe suggests. There is a new Hamilton Beach on the market, which I saw at Target, which has an external probe which one pushes through a hole in the lid (!) to tell the cooker when a preset temp. has been reached, and then to switch to warming mode.

I have disassembled a couple of these cookers and know what's inside. Their design explains why they are so inexpensive; a real thermostat would probably add five or ten dollars to the price. (I used to be a master repairman/refurbisher for General Electric when they made small appliances)

Whether or not you could "roast" in one would require a great deal of experimentation, and perhaps some danger if done in a home setting, if you use too little food.

When you say "53 degrees", is that fahrenheit or celsius?

Ray

[Elliott]

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