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Rule-of-thumb conversion for casseroles, curries, soups and braises. Reduce the recipe's liquid by about a third (nothing evaporates), and make sure meat and poultry are fully cooked through before serving.
What The Slow Cooker Conversion Calculator Works Out
- Slow cooker on LOW: an oven or hob recipe of 30 to 60 minutes becomes 6 to 8 hours on LOW. Shorter recipes go a band down (4 to 6 hours), one to two hour braises a band up (8 to 10), and anything longer 10 to 12 hours.
- Slow cooker on HIGH: roughly half the LOW time, so 3 to 4 hours for the same 30 to 60 minute recipe. One HIGH hour equals about two to two and a half on LOW, which is the switch to make when the day runs long or short.
- Tips: the chart suits casseroles, curries, soups, pulled meats and cheap cuts full of connective tissue, which 8 gentle hours turns to gelatin. Brown meat and soften onions first for flavour, layer roots at the bottom nearest the element, and resist lifting the lid: each peek costs 15 to 20 minutes of heat.
- Your cook time (advanced): one figure for the setting you will actually use: the middle of the band for tough cuts and pulses, the short end for chicken, lean meat or fish, which dry out if left for the full stretch. Poultry and pork must still reach a safe temperature before serving.
- Switch on at (advanced): enter the time you want to eat and the calculator counts back, so a 7pm dinner on LOW for 7 hours means switching on at midday. Defrost frozen meat first: the pot climbs through the danger zone too slowly otherwise.
- Liquid to use (advanced): a sealed pot loses almost nothing to evaporation, so cut the recipe's liquid by about a third (editable). Thicken at the end with the lid off on HIGH or with a cornflour slurry.
- Electricity cost (advanced): wattage x hours as kilowatt-hours at the current Ofgem price cap unit rate. A 200W slow cooker for 7 hours uses about 1.4 kWh, while an oven averaging 2,000W for an hour uses 2 kWh, so the slow cooker is usually the cheapest appliance in the kitchen despite running all day.
- Food safety: add dairy, pasta, rice and tender greens only in the final 30 to 60 minutes, make sure meat is cooked through, and cool leftovers quickly rather than leaving them in the warm crock.
Source and further reading: Food Standards Agency: cooking safely.