CONSTRUCTION AND LOOKS
The CrockPot slow cooker has a metal exterior which is painted white and a ceramic white bowl. It is designed to cook meals for one to two people, three at a stretch, and therefore it's one of the smaller slow cookers available for sale and occupies a small amount of your kitchen surface.COOKING BOWL
Both the lid and the cooking pot are stated
as being dishwasher safe in the instruction manual but because both are
on the small size manual washing is very simple and easily done.
SIZES AND CAPACITIES
We tested out the claimed capacity of 2.4 litres and this was correct. The
instruction manual recommends not filling beyond three quarters full and
this seems to be good advice to avoid the contents spilling over.
We could find no official mention of the external dimensions online or in the instruction manual so we roughly measured them ourselves. They were height 220 mm width 280 mm and depth 230 mm which is a comparatively small footprint.
COOKING PERFORMANCE
We always test out slow cookers in a semi-scientific fashion before testing them out in cooking mode. The Crock-Pot sccpqk502w slow cooker took 3 hours to reach its maximum temperature on the low setting.COOKING TEMPERATURES
Again, the high temperature was above average and probably too high for most recipes. Our advice with this slow cooker is to start it off at high and then cook all recipes on low. Don't use the high setting other than the initial warming phase.
There is no keep warm setting for this Crock-Pot slow cooker and this could well be a drawback for many people given the higher than average cooking temperature of the low setting We cooked a cottage pie filling in this slow cooker on mainly the low setting and it performed perfectly, the low quality minced beef (as most minced beef is) was tender and the sauce was of an ideal consistency.
FEATURES
At only around £20 it would be wrong to expect too many features from this slow cooker and this is the case. The only criticism we have is there is no light to show when the slow cooker is in use. The instruction manual is brief but covers the basics and has several recommended recipes.As far as energy consumption is concerned the instruction manual is sadly lacking. Looking at the base of the exterior container it quotes 180 Watts which is strange because we would expect to find a range of watts to encompass the range from warm to high settings. The stated watts is very high for a slow cooker of this size and we would question its accuracy. The unit appears to be well insulated and we can't understand why a slow cooker of this size would use 180 Watts
OTHER REVIEW OPINIONS
There are several online reviews of this slow cooker and none indicate any reliability problems. A small amount of reviewers reported dents in the casing on delivery, some noted that it cooked quicker than expected (in line with our findings) and one noted that the lid jumped up and down more than normal. Overall though the online reviews are positive.SUMMING UP
| Low setting cooking |
 |
| High setting cooking |
 |
| Keep warm | There is none |
| How easy to use |
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| Setting up |
|
| Cleaning |
 |
| Build quality |
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| Value for money |
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| Overall rating |
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Review by David Marks.