Slow'N'Savoury

It's that crockpot time of year again. I've been through a few - but they always seem to be Rival. This one, as far as I'm concerned, has been the best so far. Not perfect, but not bad.
I received this as a birthday gift about a year and a half ago - irritatingly, when I unpacked the box, the glass lid was cracked in half. Fortunately, Costco takes returns without a quibble and I eventually had a new one. (Eventually because my parents, the gift givers, live in another city, not because of anything to do with the companies involved)

SetUp

Unpack from box. Plug in. Insert ingredients. Go! Easy and simple - I like that. A note - crockpots do best if they're about 3/4 full.

Looks and Cleaning

The crockpot looks pretty good, with the stainless steel finish, and the exterior is fairly easy to clean.
The stoneware is removable (never, EVER buy a crockpot without a removable stoneware insert - it's a nightmare to clean) and is dishwasher safe, but that doesn't really matter to me because there's no way I could fit it into the dishwasher.
The lid fits, but only on the bottom rack. The lid had a plastic handle set into the top, and stuff will get up inside it and there's no way to clean it out - I just figure it's sterilised from the dishwasher and try to ignore it. The stoneware has an anti stick coating on it that's held up well with regular use over the past year and half, so it's fairly easy to clean still. The interior of the crockpot is NOT easy to clean - and it tends to get splashed into if you've slightly overfilled your crockpot or if the contents reach a boil. Liquids tend to get cooked onto this interior surface pretty fast, and of course, you can't immerse it in water...

Ease of Use

The shape and size are great - the oval makes it much much easier to cook a variety of things in it than my old round ones. 6 quarts is a reasonable amount, although I'd like a larger one. The dimensions are great, but I'd like the sides to be higher so that I can cook more at a time - I wouldn't want it to get any bigger around because it already takes up a considerable amount of space.

There are several buttons on here, and I really didn't need to read the instructions to figure them out. One button says "High, Low, Keep Warm"; which allows you to toggle through the selections "Off", which is self explanatory and Up and Down arrows for the timer. In High and Low settings you can set the timer for up to 20 hours; the Keep Warm setting, I believe, will keep your food warm at a lower temperature for 4-6 hours. After finishing with Low or High the crockpot automatically reverts to Keep Warm. This is a convenient feature over my last few crockpots which didn't have these settings - it's great to be able to set your time and not have to worry that you came home late and will have overcooked something - this is FABULOUS if you want to use it overnight. I always get a little bit paranoid about these things if they're unattended. An improvement, though, would be to be able to adjust the settings a little more, or opt out of the Keep Warm feature. For instance, I make stock in my crockpot a lot, and it does best at, say, High for six hours, Low for 8 and then Off. If I could set it like this I could throw everything in right after supper and it would already be cooling by morning so that I could make soup. But, for all that, I'm still delighted that it has the timer at all - for $60, you can't be too choosy, and it's not enough of an inconvenience to keep me from using it on a very regular basis.

I should mention here that the exterior of the pot can get very hot, which is a concern since I have small children. It's not hot enough to burn you, but it's still a surprise. I have it on a wooden table, sitting on a cookie sheet and haven't had any problems with heat damage - the cookie sheet is because I'm messy and drip a lot.

Durability

Well, certainly don't drop it on the floor! After a year and a half of very regular use (I use it in the summer as well to make stock, meatballs, BBQ ribs etc) I would say this has held up very well. In the past month the handle on the lid has broken off which has been an aggravation - we haven't been able to find a glue strong enough to withstand the heat and humidity. We haven't contacted the company in any way about a replacement - I just try to be careful. Everything else about the crockpot is perfect, so I'd rather just glue the handle back on if we can.


Bottom Line

You know, for a $60 crockpot, I don't think I can complain much. It's held up well, holds temperature consistently, and I've certainly never burned anything in it. Aside from a better handle on the lid, I would change the timers (as described above) and I think I would set some handles into the stoneware itself. I haven't seen one that has handles in the stoneware - they might be out there - but boy, I'm tired of trying to lift up a hot pot full of liquid wearing oven mitts. Really, though, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to anyone looking for a crockpot for a reasonable price that works well and consistently.