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Our list includes cookers that allow you to brown, sauté, and steam all in one pot. Slow Cooker Mini Glass Pot
Food and Wine / Hamilton Beach
Around 80% of American households own a slow cooker. In an ideal world, we’d proudly display it, gently warming a chicken stew on our kitchen counters. But that isn’t always realistic. Because of their size, most slow cookers make a clunky addition to our countertops, and many others simply don’t have the necessary capacity or features to get the job done. But there’s no denying that being able to put a hearty dish on hours ahead of time makes dinnertime much simpler.
The best slow cookers almost act like an extra stove or oven. But what kind of capacity do you need? What do all the extra features do (and do you even need them)? Will programming this thing for an overnight recipe leave you with cold, hard potatoes in the morning?
We tested more than 15 different slow cookers and talked with chef Darian Bryan to help you find the perfect pot to make delicious slow cooker recipes. After testing the best slow cookers on the market, we’ve set out to illustrate which slow cooker is best for your kitchen and lifestyle.
Its cooking surface is roomy enough for all your meats and vegetables, and it lets you control the temperature throughout the cooking process.
All that cooking space comes with a larger footprint, and it’s a bit heavy.
The Cuisinart Cook Central is designed for a perfect user experience every time. We mean it — this is the slow cooker. It has a roomy interior surface that eases browning proteins or stirring saucy, soupy dishes without mess. Its lid fits tightly and never shifts during cooking, though we should note that this lid doesn’t lock. The timer is made with cooks in mind, offering you the option to program it up to 24 hours in advance on high or low heat, and it automatically switches to the warm setting after cooking is complete. Its programmable functions are also simple enough to figure out that we didn’t even need the user manual.
Overall, the Cuisinart earned perfect scores on every test we performed. We loved its oblong shape, which makes it super easy to fit in all your meats, veggies, and sauce without overfilling and allows for even cooking throughout. Not to mention that it sautées, browns, and steams, making this the ultimate one-pot cooker.
During our tests, the outside of the cooker never got hot, even on the highest setting. Plus, we found it to be ultra-durable and incredibly easy to clean. The Cook Central’s only drawback is that it has a bit of size and heft to it, so it might be difficult to find a place to store it in your kitchen cabinets.
Capacity: 6 quarts | Weight: 16 pounds | Dimensions: 11 x 18 x 10.5 inches | Settings: Slow cook (high, low, and simmer), steam, brown/sauté, and keep warm
Food & Wine / Toni Sutton
It comes with a temperature probe that allows you to set your meat’s desired temperature and track its progress as it cooks.
Its oval shape may not be the best for cooking larger cuts of meat.
The Hamilton Beach Temp Tracker performed neck and neck with our top pick, so it was a no-brainer to make this option our runner-up. Its most remarkable feature is its temperature probe, which is integrated into the design of the lid. We love how it makes the internal temperature of the food easily accessible, which is particularly convenient when cooking larger proteins. It’s sturdy without being too heavy to move easily, the casing is never too hot to the touch, and food cooks perfectly due to the even heating of the cooker’s surface. It even has a “hold temperature” function, which allows you to sous vide, make yogurt, poach, simmer, braise, and more.
With such a stellar performance, you may be wondering why this slow cooker didn’t take the top spot on our list. We preferred the slightly rounded rectangular shape of the Cuisinart Cook Central to the oval shape of this cooker, but that hardly makes the Hamilton Beach Temp Tracker a step down. Plus, this one is far more affordable by comparison. If you’re still on the fence, we promise this runner-up value pick doesn’t require you to settle for less — we’re huge fans.
Capacity: 6 quarts | Weight: 13.1 pounds | Dimensions: 12 x 17 x 11.9 inches | Settings: Slow cook (low, medium, and high), keep warm, and hold temperature
Food & Wine / Ashley Jacobs
It’s compact and convenient, roomy enough for leftovers, and beautifully designed.
This pot is undoubtedly a splurge item, but the quality and design match the price.
Let’s start with the obvious: something this splurge-worthy must be beautiful. And the GreenPan Elite Slow Cooker is gorgeous. We love its sleek and minimal design, which comes in a variety of beautiful colors that might make you rethink storing it out of sight. Its well-placed handles are covered in silicone and allow you to lift the pot with ease without worrying about it being too hot to carry. We also found that its rounded rectangular shape allows you to fit a variety of items (like a full rack of baby back ribs or a substantial pork roast with veggies) without running out of space, despite its relatively compact size.
We thought its stylish digital control panel was intuitive and easy to use, and when using any of its many settings, we observed that the GreenPan Elite cooked food to perfection with no signs of hot spots or scorching. We also found that the pot’s ceramic nonstick interior contributed to its even cooking, working with the cooker’s thick casing to create a withstanding (if not somewhat hefty) Dutch oven-like product. So, this slow cooker could be worth the splurge because, although you might be able to find some that perform similarly for cheaper, it’s unlikely that they’ll be as aesthetically pleasing as this one.
Capacity: 6 quarts | Weight: 13.7 pounds | Dimensions: 19 x 13.4 x 10.9 inches | Settings: Slow cook (high, low, and warm), roast, brown/sauté, steam, simmer/buffet, and reheat
Food & Wine / Henry Yung
Food & Wine / Henry Yung
It’s classic, sturdy, and easy to use, with lots of room for big batches — we love this reliable slow cooker.
Its size makes it tough to tuck away, and its lid didn’t fit as well as we’d have liked.
This Crock-Pot may be the large-capacity slow cooker of our dreams, and it makes an excellent gift for people who entertain or have big families (or both). We’ll just say it — this 8-quart slow cooker is, well, large. We found that it would be suitable for feeding 6–10 people, batch cooking for a family, or cooking up a chili recipe for Sunday’s game. This means it’ll require a lot of storage space — and maybe a second set of hands to clean and dry — so it isn’t a slow cooker for anyone living in a smaller space. The good news is that its handles make it easy to carry, and its short cord eases storage and transportation. Plus, with its classic Crock-Pot design and durability, this slow cooker will likely last you a long time.
We found that every dish we prepared in it came up to temp easily, with no hot spots or burning, and it maintained that heat when the food was finished cooking, thanks to the warming function. We loved that the control panel is user-friendly and simplistic, with a few basic functions that make even the most daunting batch cooking experience no sweat. We did notice that the lid didn’t have a very precise fit and tended to rattle and move around when food reached high temperatures; however, it didn’t seem to affect the cooking process very much. We were able to set and forget each recipe, and they came out perfect every time.
Capacity: 8 quarts | Weight: 15 pounds | Dimensions: 17.2 x 11.9 x 10.5 inches | Settings: Slow cook (low, medium, and high), programmable digital timer, and auto-warming
Food & Wine / Meredith Butcher
Food & Wine / Meredith Butcher
We love the Cuisinart Cook Central 3-in-1 6-Quart Multi-Cooker for its roomy cooking surface and multifunctionality. Its settings let you brown, sauté, and even steam, all in one convenient appliance — making it the ultimate tool for one-pot cooking.
The Hamilton Beach Temp Tracker 6-Quart Slow Cooker came in a close second as a value pick, with its built-in temperature probe that lets you set and track the ideal temperature of your meat while you slow cook it.
We consulted chef/owner Darian Bryan of The Plating Society and Bratts Hill. The Jamaican chef uses a slow cooker with some frequency and shared insight on selecting the right size. “It depends on the person’s lifestyle,” he advises. “How large is their family? Do they entertain often?” He suggests that smaller slow cookers, like 5- to 6-quart capacity pots, are more than enough for single or two-person households. At that size, a slow cooker will be big enough for occasional batch cooking, meal prepping, or dinner for a family of four. The large-capacity slow cookers, like 8-quart appliances, are best for those who entertain or batch cook with frequency.
Sometimes, slow cookers operate with nothing more than a range of settings as rudimentary as low, high, and warm. This is enough to cover most foods a slow cooker can tackle: everything from chilis, soups, and stews to roasts, sauces, and braises. In those cases, any color you might want to develop by browning or searing may have to be done on a stovetop before transferring your meal to the slow cooker. Otherwise, all the magic can happen inside the pot with just those three temperatures.
You can do plenty with such simple settings, but some slow cookers now come with a full panel of options. If you want to do something more specific — like sear proteins, steam vegetables, or even make yogurt — there are slow cookers with built-in programming for uses such as these. Some models even allow you to custom program specific temperatures and cook times so that you can literally just set it and forget it. But extra features also come with extra cost, so determine how you are most likely to use the cooker and buy the one that best suits your lifestyle.
Above all, your slow cooker needs to be functional. What’s the point if you’re repeatedly consulting a convoluted user manual and jabbing at poorly labeled buttons? Make sure that the cooker’s control panel makes all programs, settings, and functions clear and easy to access — or you may end up never using those fancy features at all. Also, keep an eye out for functional design features, like whether or not the model you’re eyeing has a locking lid (which can come in handy if you frequently transport dishes) or if you can use the slow cooker’s insert directly on the stovetop or in the oven for easy searing and browning.
To find the best slow cookers on the market, we tested 16 models, assessing them on factors such as their ease of use, design, performance, and value. We put each cooker through three rounds of rigorous kitchen tests to determine their overall functionality and how well they stacked up against each other in terms of features and performance.
“I mainly use slow cookers for long roasts such as legs of lamb, pork shoulders, and octopus,“ says Bryan, noting that heavier, denser foods that take time to break down are perfect for the long-term, hands-off style of slow cooking. “Cooking octopus long and slow makes it extremely tender,” he says.
Bryan utilizes slow cookers at home and in his restaurants to make tender short ribs and savory curry lentil stew. “The number one dish people request is my short ribs,” he says. “They tell me the tender meat married with the red wine sauce is unforgettable.” Overall, though, slow cookers tend to be a great kitchen tool for winter recipes, but you can certainly use them all year round.
Typically, a slow cooker will have at least a low and a high setting. The low option is around 190 to 200°F, often at an 8-hour interval, while the high setting is typically between 280 and 300°F at a 4-hour interval. “I love using the higher temperature for sauces and stews,” Bryan says. However, he doesn’t advise using the high option for larger pieces of meat: “It just isn’t enough time to penetrate or break down the proteins.”
The simple answer is yes. Crockpot is a brand of slow cooker — “the original slow cooker” — invented over four decades ago for the sole purpose of cooking beans. Now, there are a number of models and brands of slow cookers on the market to choose from, but Crockpots are known for that classic slow cooker design we all recognize.
“I would not suggest using a slow cooker for frozen meat ever,” Bryan warns. The United States Department of Agriculture explains that frozen pieces will take longer to reach a safe internal temperature, which can result in foodborne illness. To be safe, thoroughly thaw any meat before adding it to a slow cooker recipe.
“I use mine this way all the time,” Bryan says. “It’s convenient not to have a million gadgets in the kitchen.” You may have to adjust your recipe a little, but overall, the best Instant Pots can be used for many of the same functions that a slow cooker can, and more.
Calphalon Slow Cooker ($170 at Amazon) Lightweight and durable, this pot is the right size for your cupboard and your counter. It is a little more expensive than some of the other small-capacity pots we tested, but it’s worth the price.
Green Life Cook Duo Nonstick Slow Cooker ($60 at Amazon) We appreciated how reliable and easy to operate it is, with a control panel that is manageable for enthusiasts and beginners alike. There are some inconveniences — like the lid not locking in place — and it has pretty basic functions, though this is a great value pick.
Wolf Gourmet Multi-Function Cooker ($585 at Amazon) We loved the Wolf Gormet’s overall performance, design, and functionality, but we’re not sold on the price. If you’re a big fan of Wolf appliances and aren’t opposed to the incredibly steep price tag, then this wouldn’t be a bad pick.
Crock-Pot Programmable Slow Cooker with MyTime Technology ($60 at Amazon) This machine is perfect for the “set-and-forget” cooking style, featuring clear labels and several options for scheduling and cooking types. However, it’s not comfortable to cart around, and the affordable price translates to some of its elements feeling flimsy.
KitchenAid 6-Quart Slow Cooker ($70 at Amazon) The KitchenAid 6-Quart Slow Cooker is comfortably lightweight without losing quality. What we didn’t love were some of its other design features: an outside that gets too hot, handles that are too small, and an inconveniently placed power cord.
All-Clad Electric Dutch Oven ($330 at Amazon) Advertised as an electric Dutch oven, this slow cooker features a beautiful cast iron insert that doubles as a standard Dutch oven. This makes it versatile and rugged but difficult to transport based on weight. We also had some issues with achieving a desired and consistent temperature while cooking, meaning we couldn’t just set it and forget it.
Instant Pot Precision 6-Quart Dutch Oven ($135 at Amazon) We ran into similar problems with Instant Pot’s version of an electric Dutch oven. While the enameled cast iron insert is a great feature, and it has several useful functions (like searing and braising), it leaves much to be desired when it comes to slow cooking. Plus, we noticed that the non-enameled edges of the pot and lid tend to rust easily.
We tested several other slow cookers, but they just didn’t measure up to our favorites in terms of performance. The DeLonghi Livenza Slow Cooker surprised us by cooking a little bit too low and slow. Even on its highest temperature setting, we struggled to get it up to a strong simmer, which resulted in a recipe (that should’ve taken only six hours to cook) clocking in at 16 hours total cook time. However, most of the other cookers we tried had the opposite problem: The Beautiful by Drew Barrymore 6-Quart Programmable Slow Cooker and Ninja’s Foodi PossibleCooker PRO both ran a bit on the hot side.
Slowcooker We struggled with the PossibleCooker PRO only having two temperature options on its slow cooker setting (250 or 300°F), which left our brisket thoroughly burned in the end. Some of the other slow cookers we tried only missed the mark due to their small capacity — we thought they’d fit in better with the best mini slow cookers.