Hamilton Beach Set ‘n Forget Programmable Slow Cooker (33969A)

A few months ago, we decided to save money by cooking our own food.  (We had been eating Trader Joe’s frozen meals and going out and that gets expensive very quickly.)  Thing is, neither my husband nor I love cooking all that much.  So I guess it comes as no surprise that I am terrible at it. 

However, I did come across an awesome blog called a year of slow cooking that presented me with a bunch of easy-to-make recipes in very little time.  (Since then I have found other blogs with other recipes: Get Crocked and 365 days of slow cooking for example but a year of slow cooking is still my favorite.)  The recipe problem solved, I started cooking using my small, old, and very basic crockpot.  And that crockpot was doable but some recipes call for cooking on low for 9 hours; others for 6 and really all I want is to throw the ingredients into the crockpot and forget about it.

My old basic crockpot didn’t let me do that.  The Hamilton Beach, on the other hand, does.  And it is so easy to use!  I hate electronics (ask my husband) but I can operate this crockpot with ease.  You just press the on button (the red circle on the left) then select the time by pushing the up/down arrows on the right, press enter, select the heat setting press enter and you’re done.  Once it’s finished, it goes to Warm setting so your food doesn’t spoil. This means that if you set it on a Friday night and want to sleep in Saturday morning, you can. You really don’t have to worry about getting up just to turn off the crockpot. If you are cooking a full chicken or something as big as that you can use the thermometer probe and set your own temperature you want maintained to make sure that meat is cooked properly.  It also has one of those lids that locks down with simple lever clamps at each end so now I can be one of “those” people who takes up the office kitchen because we are having a potluck. The lid does have a rubber seal but do be sure to keep it upright because there are small vent holes and a hole for the probe to be inserted through the glass lid.

All in all, this really is a set it and forget it crockpot (as advertised).  It is also worth noting (because this has been in the news) that Healing Gourmet (a food safety site) lists Hamilton as one of the ten brands to look for when choosing a crockpot and that wirecutter (a site that reviews the gadgets in our lives) tells us that this crockpot “outperformed much more expensive models.”

I admit I haven’t tried those more expensive models (the whole point of using a crockpot to begin with was to save money) but I have to admit I am a little in love with this crockpot and highly recommend it.