Post by shin on Sept 21, 2015 5:52:16 GMT
Well just had a fine get together with my father, first time I had him out to the new place, showed off the garden and the beginning renovations.
And received as a housewarming gift -- a crockpot.
Well now, it's this 'Crockpot Classic' model, three settings, high, low, and warm. Well there's an 'off' setting too.
And it reminds me of fireless cooking, and those round tins they would use for it.
So I bought the fixings for some beef stew to try it out, and am cooking some up tonight. Secret is you add some tomato sauce to the recipe. Now I touched the side of that crockpot -- it does get hot! Good thing oven mitts came with it too.
But it made me think, now how does this crockpot work. So I read up on it -- the low setting gradually brings the food up to a simmer, and stops at a simmer. The high setting, ditto, just faster. And I am thinking -- how does it know to stop at a simmer, does it stop because of a temperature sensor, or because that's the limit the heating element can bring it to?
Because I think a crockpot would be great as a kind of fireless cooker if it had an insulated box around it. If it works with a temperature sensor, it would get up to simmering, and then use far less electricity because of the insulation. The stoneware pot lifts out of the base of it -- no problems there. Just build the insulation around the base, and drop it in. If I want to make it permanent, I could take the control dial off the front, use a little stick to extend it out to the front of the insulated box. Or I could just turn it on and drop it in, make it non-permanent.
On the other hand if it could get too hot in there, insulated, that could be an issue? Then one might need to someone rig up a temperature sensor to turn it off when the temperature got too high. That I don't know if a sensor like that is easily available or not, like the are for the freezers to convert them to fridges, but the opposite. But hopefully it is less complicated than that. Suppose you could just turn it off and shut the box after a point, but set it and forget it sounds best. Well I don't know all the issues of how it would all work, but I'll read up a bit.
What do folks think, is this a good idea for a project?
And received as a housewarming gift -- a crockpot.
Well now, it's this 'Crockpot Classic' model, three settings, high, low, and warm. Well there's an 'off' setting too.
And it reminds me of fireless cooking, and those round tins they would use for it.
So I bought the fixings for some beef stew to try it out, and am cooking some up tonight. Secret is you add some tomato sauce to the recipe. Now I touched the side of that crockpot -- it does get hot! Good thing oven mitts came with it too.
But it made me think, now how does this crockpot work. So I read up on it -- the low setting gradually brings the food up to a simmer, and stops at a simmer. The high setting, ditto, just faster. And I am thinking -- how does it know to stop at a simmer, does it stop because of a temperature sensor, or because that's the limit the heating element can bring it to?
Because I think a crockpot would be great as a kind of fireless cooker if it had an insulated box around it. If it works with a temperature sensor, it would get up to simmering, and then use far less electricity because of the insulation. The stoneware pot lifts out of the base of it -- no problems there. Just build the insulation around the base, and drop it in. If I want to make it permanent, I could take the control dial off the front, use a little stick to extend it out to the front of the insulated box. Or I could just turn it on and drop it in, make it non-permanent.
On the other hand if it could get too hot in there, insulated, that could be an issue? Then one might need to someone rig up a temperature sensor to turn it off when the temperature got too high. That I don't know if a sensor like that is easily available or not, like the are for the freezers to convert them to fridges, but the opposite. But hopefully it is less complicated than that. Suppose you could just turn it off and shut the box after a point, but set it and forget it sounds best. Well I don't know all the issues of how it would all work, but I'll read up a bit.
What do folks think, is this a good idea for a project?
