7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Absolutely Useless devices
Date of Review: Aug 1, 2008
The Bottom Line: There is nothing slow about this slow cooker.
Having been a slow cooker user and lover for decades I'm simply astounded at the so called "Improvements" that Rival has made to their line. After scorching a couple pot roasts, ruining a few batches of porridge, soup, and home oatmeal we thought that perhaps we had a bad unit. Luckily for us my wife had gotten 2 of them for her birthday and we hadn't returned the other yet.
however cooking with the new one yielded the same results. A little investigation with a digital thermometer and the reason became obvious. With our old slow cooker low would yield a temperature of around 160-180. These new and improved units low is around 220-230.. Remember that water boils at 212 degrees.
So what would you cook that requires 12 hrs of boiling? What fluids or juices are left in any food after 12 hrs of boiling? how about 10 or even 8 hrs of boiling?
A call into Rival's help line revealed that this is indeed a new "feature". Since they didn't want people to be "harmed" by the possibility of undercooked food they've now removed the possibility.
It looks like we're off to E-bay and garage sales then to try to find a actual working crock pot.