Kitchen Needs

The oven is back on, the evenings are drawing in, and a slow cooker starts to look like a good idea. Put everything in before work, come home to dinner. The catch is that most slow cookers are big. So here are two compact ones, side by side, for one or two people and a worktop with no spare room.

Tower Infinity 1.5L slow cooker (T16020)

This is the smaller of the two. Retailer listings give its size as 15.5cm high, 21cm wide and 19cm deep, and it runs on 120W. It holds 1.5 litres, which the listings put at about two portions of stew, casserole or soup.

You get three heat settings with a keep warm function, a tempered glass lid so you can check on dinner without lifting it, cool touch handles and non-slip feet. The pot lifts out and goes in the dishwasher. One retailer’s listing mentions a one year guarantee, extendable to three if you register it online.

Good to know: 1.5 litres is small. It suits two dinners, not a batch for the freezer. Listings also disagree on what the removable pot is made of, so read the Amazon listing before you buy if that matters to you.

Crock-Pot 1.8L slow cooker (CSC080)

A little bigger, at 1.8 litres. It serves one (very hungry) person or two people, and Crock-Pot describes it as a good size for couples and individuals.

The bowl is removable stoneware. Crock-Pot says it’s oven safe, so you can brown a joint or a cheese topping once the slow cooking is done. It’s also fine to serve from at the table. The bowl and the lid are both dishwasher safe, and the bowl can go in the fridge or freezer afterwards. There are three settings: low, high and keep warm. A retailer listing mentions a 12 month warranty.

Good to know: Crock-Pot’s page doesn’t list the size or wattage, so check the Amazon listing and measure your gap first. And if you plan to use the bowl in the oven, read the manual for the limits before you try it.

So which one?

If space is your main worry, the Tower is the one with a size you can measure against your worktop. It’s also the smaller pot, so it will be the neater of the two.

If you’d like one bowl that goes from cooker to oven to table, and you don’t mind a slightly bigger pot, the Crock-Pot is the better fit. The extra 300ml is a small gain, but it can be the difference between one portion of chilli and two.

Neither is a family-sized machine. Both are made for one or two people cooking modest amounts, and that’s the whole point of them.

The pictures here are illustrations of each type of product, so the real thing will look a little different.

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