Slow cooker
Countertop appliance for long, unattended simmering.
Last updated
A slow cooker is a countertop electrical appliance that simmers food at lower temperatures than baking or frying.[1] It allows unattended cooking for many hours of dishes like pot roasts, soups, and stews.[1]
Quick Facts
- Inventor
- Irving Naxon (born Irving Nachumsohn)
- Field
- Electrical cooking appliance
Facts from the source article.
What the cited sources add
The Smithsonian article notes that Nachumsohn's mother immigrated from Russia and that he became Western Electric's first Jewish engineer.[2] Nachumsohn's slow cooker was a solution for summer heat, allowing cooking without turning on the oven.[2] At the 1971 National Housewares Show in Chicago, Rival unveiled its rebranded version of the Naxon Beanery.[2] Modern recipe websites encourage home cooks to slow cook and then freeze batches of produce.[2]
The Crock-Pot brand now competes with KitchenAid, Hamilton Beach, and Instant Pot.[2] Slow cooker recipes are so popular that AllRecipes has a dedicated category with nearly 2,500 recipes.[2]
Key facts and facts and history
Electrical engineer Irving Nachumsohn learned of this tradition from a relative and later developed the Naxon Beanery All-Purpose Cooker in Chicago.[3][2] Nachumsohn applied for a patent on May 21, 1936, which was granted on January 23, 1940.[2] The Naxon Beanery was a squat crock with a heating element built around its inner chamber for even cooking.[2] Rival asked inventor Alex MacMaster to develop the bean cooker into a large-scale production model for family meals.[4]
Sales grew from $2 million in 1971 to $93 million four years later.[2] Americans purchased 12.7 million slow cookers in 2018.[2] The slow cooker's origin is linked to a traditional Jewish stew called cholent, which was prepared by placing crocks in still-hot bakery ovens in Vilna, Lithuania, where the residual heat would cook the stew overnight.[2] Removable stoneware inserts, which made cleaning simpler, were introduced by Rival in 1974.[4]
References
- Wikipedia, "Slow cooker" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gisslen, Wayne (2011). Professional cooking, 7th ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 71 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Delgado, "A Brief History of the Crock Pot", Smithsonian, 26 November 2019. facts only, no text reused. smithsonianmag.com
- Wikipedia, "Slow cooker" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Delgado, "A Brief History of the Crock Pot", Smithsonian, 26 November 2019; Delgado, "A Brief History of the Crock Pot", Smithsonian, 26 November 2019; Naxon, Lenore, "My Dad, the Inventor of the Crock Pot", Beyond Bubbie, 8 April 2013; Pilkington, "From humble to high tech, a slow cooker history", CNET, January 31, 2014; "The Rotarian", April 1950, p. 2 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Slow cooker" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Delgado, "A Brief History of the Crock Pot", Smithsonian, 26 November 2019 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Slow cooker (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Slow cooker (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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