WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: We're talking about what's happened with the slow cooker!

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the podcast cooking with Bruce and Mark and I'm Mark Skrubber and together with Bruce my husband We have written three dozen cookbooks. We are in the process of the editorial process of the Three dozen and first cookbook. It's sitting on my desk in a million pieces from the copy editor and in this show We're not going to be talking about any of our books. Although maybe we'll tell you about that in a minute We got a one minute cooking tip.

We're going to talk about slow cookers. How they got started. Where'd they come from? It's kind of an interesting story where they came from and where they go and what happened to them in the modern age and they've Changed dramatically in really fundamental ways. Not just because Bells and whistles. So we want to talk about that and we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week. So let's get started.

Our one minute cooking tips. Save the oil from tins of anchovies and sardines and even tuna, but it has to be packed in good olive oil. Make sure it says olive oil or even extra virgin olive oil. Then you can add some chopped fresh herbs, even a clove of garlic to this oil and it's up to you. Powerhouse umami blast for sauces and salad dressings.

Yeah, if you put this oil at the bottom, I know it's going to seem counterintuitive, but with garlic at the bottom of a beef stew, and not all of it, like, you know, some of it out of the ten with garlic, I'm telling you, your beef stew won't know what hit it. And no, it's not going to taste fishy. No, it's not. No, it's going to melt into it. And you're going to get this really salty, Big, savory hit underneath the beef stew. That's called umami, a word Mark hates. Yeah, I don't like it.

It's become a buzzword. Okay, so look at that. We finished a one minute cooking tip in under a minute. We're going to move on to questions about slow cookers, its history, and what's happened to them. Before we do that, let me say that we do have a newsletter. It comes out, I don't know, two times a month, once a month, something like that. You can sign up for it on our website, cookingwithbruceandmark. com or Bruce and mark. com.

I don't capture your email or your name, nor do I allow the provider MailChimp to capture them, nor do I allow them to sell it. So you can always unsubscribe at any time. If you would like to get our newsletter, which is sometimes connected to this podcast and sometimes completely disconnected and has recipes on its own. All right.

Next, what has ever happened to the slow cooker and where did the slow cooker come from? It's also called a crockpot. Oh no, that's the brand name, crack pot. It's a crockpot, a crack pot. And it was so successful that the brand name crockpot. It became what everybody called the slow cooker countertop appliance. Like Kleenex. It's like Instant Pot. If you have an electric pressure cooker, no matter what brand it is, you're probably calling it an Instant Pot.

Yeah, I am amazed that people say all the time, here's my, I don't know, fig or, you instant pot. I'm like, well, no, that's your fake or electric pressure cooker. But the word has just become so ubiquitous for the countertop electric pressure cookers, like Kleenex for the stuff you pull out of a box and blow your nose with, which is a brand name. And it's the same with crockpot. So let's talk about this for a minute because actually an interesting history.

The slow cooker, as we know, it was invented by Irving Nachason and um, Nachason was an immigrant to the United States and was Western Electric's first Jewish engineer. Hey, let's hear it for Jewish engineers. That's who you are. What he patented in 1940, he called the Naxon Beanery. Because he changed his name from Nachason to Nachason. When he came to the United States to Naxa to emphasize his name. And he also called it the beanery because he thought it was best to cook beans.

And that's kind of what he did. And so tell us about where this came from. So this came from his family. I mean, he was told these stories and it made him think. So in the late 19th century, in a Jewish neighborhood in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, Once known as the Jerusalem of the North. On Shabbat, folks would bring crocks of food, probably beans, to the local bakery and they would place them in the ovens, which were still hot from the week's baking. And they'd Uh, we're gonna stop.

For all the Christians in the audience, there can be no baking in a Jewish kosher bakery on Shabbat. No cooking. You can't cook at home. On the Sabbath. You can't cook in the bakery, but those ovens were still hot when they stopped working on Friday evening. Right. So they'd put their food in there. They'd stay overnight in those hot but cooling ovens, and by the next day, everything was cooked slowly. So we can presume there were beans in that since it was the Naxon beanery that he made.

It's really funny that The history of this slow cooker has a religious foundation in its inception. Yeah, it has a kashrut foundation and I would say that many people who keep kosher still use slow cookers because they can set them to go before sundown on the sabbath and then either have something the next day left over, they can't turn it off if they're super religious. But they can set it so it keeps warm, right? Again. After that. I think it's probably a very useful tool if you keep kosher.

So, in 1970, this Irving Naxon sold his company and his appliance, the Naxon Beanery, to Rival, the great Rival company, you know, rival that made so many countertop appliances in the sixties and seventies. He sold it to them and they changed the name to the Crockpot. It's rival who, who originally called it the Crockpot and unveiled it at a 1971 houseware show in Chicago. And yep, there it was in harvest gold and. Avocado green. And it exploded, right? I mean, the sales went through the roof.

Ninety three million bucks in just four years back in the early 70s. Or Irving Naxon. I feel sorry for Irving Naxon. I mean, he doesn't have the wherewithal that Rival did to turn this product into almost a household tool. I'm sure if Rival bought it, he was selling well, but not at the levels it eventually sold at. And I bet he didn't keep a cut. That would have been really nice. Well, no, I bet he didn't. He was an engineer. So he probably didn't even think about these things. What is it?

How does this thing work to begin with? So you have this outer casing, this, this machine thing that heats up, right? And it heats up an inner container. And that inner container can be crockery or it could be metal and it can be removable or not removable. And that crockery inner container is where they got the name crockery. Because originally it was only a crockery inner container.

And there's a lid, and it's not a tight fitting lid, but it sits on heavily enough so no steam escapes because you don't get a reduction of steam. when you cook in a slow cooker.

So, um, these original slow cookers that came out from Arrival, and we're going to talk about this in a minute, but I'm going to divert to something else, but I just want to say, they cooked at very, very low temperatures, and this was before USDA food safety regulations became what they are today, and that will play out in what we're about to say. But let me just say one thing before we get to that.

A lot of people, of course, set their slow cooker at and go off to work or set their slow cooker and go to bed. I guess that's not quite so bad, but they go off to work. Well, that's what it's designed for. There is not one single fire department in North America, in Canada, at least Canada and the United States, that recommends doing so. You are leaving a hot cooking appliance on your counter without supervision.

Jim Long, who was the director of the fire department, public information for the New York Fire Department. Um, he was, has been interviewed and he says that must be attended to. In fact, his quote is, someone should always have eyes on the appliance.

Yes. But you can't do that if you leave for work, so I mean, when I was a kid, I definitely remember my mother putting clothes in the dryer, and then we left to go out to dinner, we left to go to church, whatever we did, and the clothes were in the dryer. These days, of course, I know too much about dryer lint and dryer fires, and I would never have the dryer running without one of us at home. It's just not going to happen. And we keep a fire extinguisher in the laundry room.

Yeah, which, by the way, you should keep in your kitchen. But, uh, you should just know that no one And I mean, no one who works in fire safety believes that you should leave the house with a going crockpot or a go or growing slow cooker on your counter. Now, according to them, though, most of these fires and the problems come from bad cords. Cords are in bad shape.

So he does say, check your cords regularly, make sure that they are solid, that the connections are tight and follow the manufacturer's instructions. And also, outlets go wonky at homes every time they start to open. Arc. Uh, I have an outlet in my office that is, uh, in need of some service because, uh, a space heater kind of melted. Blew it out. Melted, yeah. Melted the top. Plug in it. Yeah. So outlets go out over time. Things.

I hope no one from our insurance company heard that Hope not Either things happen over time and you shouldn't leave it. Okay, so now I'm going to go back and tell you about originary slow cookers and what, originary, and what Naxon had to do with his beanery and how rival did it. In the early days, there were not sear settings. They were not keep warm settings. There was just high and low.

And essentially, this isn't completely true, but essentially low was 120 degrees Fahrenheit and high was about 135, even up to 140 Fahrenheit. Basically, it's sous vide levels. Yes, and you should just know that the USDA now has, of course, come on the scene and has enforced safety standards for food. And if you don't know this, I'm here to tell you this. The bad zone for food is between 40 degrees Fahrenheit and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

It's in that zone between 40 and 140 Fahrenheit that bad bugs can grow. So the old Slow cookers were essentially Petri dishes. Oh, yum. Well, they were. They were. That's what they were. They were. I'm not saying that we, uh, my mom used one, we had a crock pot, it, nobody that I know of got sick because of it, but they do violate modern safety standards. And I think, uh, Possibly that also came out of the whole idea that it grew out of beans, right?

If he was cooking beans in it, you didn't need to worry about safety so much because beans are not like chicken. And modern slow cookers and, uh, Bruce will talk about this in a minute, modern slow cookers cook much hotter than the old ones do. And you can know this just by looking at slow cooker recipes. If you pull up a slow cooker recipe that your mom had, Or that comes, let's say you find one even on the internet that comes from the seventies or eighties.

You're going to see that you put the chuck roast in and you set it on high, high, even you set it on high for 10 to 12 hours. If you look at the same recipe these days, it's going to say, set it on low for four to six hours. We wrote a slow cooker book called the great American slow cooker book. And in that book, we got.

Interesting comments from people who are reading it because they say, wait a second, you know, you, you call for chicken thighs to go in on low for six hours or high for two, right? And it's like, well, I could do that on my stove. And the problem is, yeah, modern slow cookers cook really hot on high. They can go anywhere from 200 to 300, depending on your brand. That's like putting it on a stove. Okay, so I, I mark of the team. I like slow cookers and I use slow cookers.

And I use slow cookers to make chili for Bruce's concerts for the parties after Bruce's concerts for this Baro group. I use slow cookers all the time. When he's outta town, I'll make myself some kind of stew in a slow cooker. I love them. But here's the thing. It's true, it is like the stove, the difference is when something's on the stove, no matter where I adjust the burner, even super low, I still have to mess with it, I have to open the pot and stir it.

While I should keep an eye on a slow cooker, as in walk through the kitchen every once in a while, make sure everything's okay, I don't have to do anything. It's just going in there and it's doing its thing. And because it's crockery and not metal, it's doing it right. rather slowly and insulatedly, but modern slow cookers cook a lot hotter. They do. And it's interesting. Some of them now come with metal inserts.

So Mark's thing that they cook slower and crock is even more in trouble now because you buy a modern one with metal and that's, and those are designed to lift out. You could actually put it on your stove to heat it up to Brown your meat and then you put it back in. Yes. So they really are becoming almost. I would call them even like electric Dutch ovens. On slow, you're going to get anywhere between 160 and 200. On average. On average. There are outliers.

And on high, some of them go up to 300, but most are over 200, And in fact, you know, we also wrote. And by the way, we're talking Fahrenheit here. So we're not speaking in centigrade or Celsius, but we're talking about Fahrenheit, and so we are way, even at 160, we're not yet above the boiling point of water. But once we hit those upper numbers, like 260, 280, 300, we're way above the boiling point of water. But there's ways to get around these higher numbers.

When you're shopping for a Crock Pot, you have to be careful and look at the manufacturer's websites and the owner's manuals and only buy one that tells you what the temperatures are. And that's it. So for instance, I bought a really cool little Cuisinart one that has four settings. And the four settings are high, which is at 212, which is okay. I mean, it's a little higher than I like, but it's fine. Low is at 200. Now, that I would consider high. So I kind of use that one when I want high.

It has a simmer setting at 185, which is really useful if you want to let things go for a few hours. And here's the thing I love. It has a warm setting at 165. They tell you don't cook at that setting, but sometimes I like to put our overnight oatmeal in at 165. It doesn't burn. It's beautiful. When I make steel cutters, so my, just, if you want to know, my recipe is five to one, so in volume, so five, cups of, or let's say I use a cup, five cups of water to one cup of steel cutouts.

But whatever the volume is, I don't care. You use an iced tea glass. It's five to one in terms of volume for steel cutouts. And that can last me about eight, nine hours. I find if we go ten hours, like I put it on early and we get up late, it's really to Crunchy at the edges. I mean, it started to burn and let me just say the old crockpots when they first developed the keep warm setting The keep warm setting was really low I mean 140 which is food safety even lower than that.

I really original ones. They were way low They were like body temperature. So yeah, that is a petri dish. Yeah, it's a total petri dish So, you know I mean This is part of the reason people kind of icked out about slow cookers in the late 80s and early 90s because they didn't I did have some food safety concerns associated with them. Modern ones don't, but then you have to adapt the recipes. So you cannot use your ancient slow cooker recipes with modern slow cookers.

You need our book, The Great American Slow Cooker Book. Sure, we have a book on slow cookers, which every recipe is sized for every size of slow cooker. slow cooker, but yes, we have that book, but as well as that book, uh, there's just ways that you have to adapt. As Bruce says, you know, I want chilies. Gosh, when I make chili in the slow cooker for his concerts, I put it on high for two hours and it's way done. Hey, how do you spell chili? Oh, no, no. We're not going to have that discussion.

Bruce is making reference to the fact that the copy editor and I were in a giant discussion about how to spell chili. C H I L I. I don't mean the country. I mean the fruit, like jalapenos and poblanos. And it's a whole thing. The old way to spell it is C H I L E, like the country and the modern way that Merriam Webster accepts is C H I L I. Yay for Merriam, that's the way I do it.

Okay, well, we've gone with the old way in the book, so, because I'm following the copy editor's lead, but it was a whole discussion about chilies. Okay, that's nothing to do with slow cookers, except, oh, I should tell you, since we're stopped here on chilies. And about chilies, yeah. I just tell you, if you don't know this, slow cookers So if you think that you've got it spiced up with cayenne or jalapenos or pickled jalapeno rings or whatever it is, you probably don't.

You're going to either have to add more at the end or if you don't mind heat, you can do what I do, which is just always double the amount of any spicy ingredients. Yep, a slow And I also find it destroys ginger. Just destroys it. Anything that has any kind of a heat kick to it, it just, it disintegrates those molecules and you end up having to add more. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a thing. So again, cayenne, chili powder, chilies themselves, all those things.

You might want to up your amounts or you're going to have to add more or add sriracha at the end if you want it spicy. Okay. That's our whole rundown of the slow cooker from Lithuanian. Kosher bakeries up to the modern high temperature of modern slow cookers. That's everything we could say right now about it. Before we get to the final segment of this podcast, let me say that it would be great if you could check out our Facebook group, cooking person, Mark, we would love to see you there.

This episode will be posted there and you can continue to tell us what's making you happy in food

this week. Other than that, let's tell you what's making us happy. Happy in food this week. Lamb kofta. Oh, we went to dinner at a friend's last night and he made us lamb kofta, ground spiced Middle Eastern spice meatballs. They're slightly elongated. He skewered them on Rosemary and then roasted them and they were delicious. They were. I served him with a yogurt. So he can like sauce. And, uh, it was quite delicious. It's also lovely to be cooked for by other people. Yes, it is.

So that was a really nice benefit. And they had just returned, our friends, from Cape Cod. And so they also brought a toast. ton of smoked fish that we ate before dinner that they'd found at a smokery, I guess, in Chatham or somewhere near Chatham. So it was a really nice meal all the way around. Okay, well, what's making me happy in food this week has probably made me happy before, and it's lemon marmalade. And Bruce always makes it.

lemon marmalade, not just an orange, he makes a lot of orange marmalade, but he makes lemon and the lemon is so absurdly sour and delicious that I had it. I'm going to tell you that before we recorded this episode, I had it on a piece of toast and I had scrambled eggs and toast and lemon marmalade for my lunch and it was really quite delicious. I love lemon marmalade more than I can possibly say.

I guess if you ask me what kind of sweet I want, I'll, I'll pick lemon before I pick Chocolate every time. It's just my thing. I agree. Sour. Yeah. I love lemon pies, lemon cakes, all that kind of stuff. Okay. That's the podcast for this week. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being with us. We appreciate that you've chosen to spend time with us and please subscribe to this podcast. So you don't miss a single episode. If you've got a crock pot story, do you have an old crock pot?

Are you still using it? Do you like the new ones? Go to our Facebook group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, and tell us your crock pot story. Pot Stories. We want to know what is going on in your kitchen here on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.