Advanced options
What The Slow Cooker Cost Calculator Works Out
- Slow cooker per meal: wattage x cooking hours, divided by 1,000 for kilowatt-hours and multiplied by the unit rate. Eight hours on low at around 160W totals about 1.3 kWh, roughly 34p at the current Ofgem price cap unit rate; high at 250W for four hours comes out similar.
- Same casserole in the oven: an electric oven averaging 1.2kW once up to temperature, braising for 2.5 hours, costs about double. The slow cooker heats a sealed litre-scale pot rather than a 70-litre box.
- Yearly saving: the per-meal difference multiplied by your weekly uses and 52 weeks. Two slow-cooked meals a week saves GBP 40 to GBP 50 a year on electricity alone.
- Custom wattage (advanced): enter the rating from the base of your own cooker. Small 1.5-litre pots run at 100W or so; large 6.5-litre family models and sear-function multi-cookers can draw 300W to 1,000W on their higher settings.
- Electricity unit rate (advanced): defaults to the current Ofgem price cap unit rate but is editable for your own tariff.
- Oven draw and time (advanced): change the oven's average power and how long the dish would take conventionally. A fan oven on a low braise averages 1kW to 1.5kW; a gas oven is cheaper per kWh but less efficient, so the comparison is indicative only.
- Slow cooker per hour and per year (advanced): the hourly running cost at your rate, and the annual electricity for all the meals you cook this way.
- Pressure cooker per meal (advanced): the rival for cheap cuts, doing the same job in about an hour at roughly 0.9 kWh. It is usually a few pence cheaper still, at the price of higher drama and more attention.
- Total yearly saving with cheap cuts (advanced): adds the ingredient saving per meal (shin, brisket, shoulder, oxtail and cheeks versus prime cuts) to the electricity saving. The pounds per kilo usually dwarf the pence per kWh. Kidney beans must be boiled hard for ten minutes before slow cooking, and frozen meat goes in defrosted.