The Hamilton Beach Stay or Go Slow Cooker: What's Great About It

Hamilton Beach has wowed us for many years with their kitchen gadgets. The Hamilton Beach Stay or Go Slow Cooker is a wonderful kitchen gadget indeed. It can take your culinary abilities to a whole new "high" and wow your family and friends.

I don't think I understood what was great about slow cookers until I tasted food cooked in one. My husband brought home the Stay or Go, cooked some Chicken Adobo for us (a tasty Philippine dish involving chicken, soy sauce, garlic, pepper and a bay leaf, which is then baked) and I have to say that he "hit it out of the park," so to speak. It was delicious. Slow cookers are most often praised for their efficiency - you can prepare your dinner before you leave for work, pop it in the slow cooker, set it for eight hours (or more) of cooking, and return home to a fully-cooked dinner. Well, that happens to be true, but in my mind the much greater advantage is having a meal that has been slow-cooked for a long time. It adds a whole new dimension of taste to the food. Slow-cooked food is all the rage these days in restaurants, particularly places like barbecue joints. Here's the home cook's chance to achieve a similar level of quality.

The Hamilton Beach "Stay or Go" Slow Cooker has two settings to help you control the cooking of your food: "Program" and "Manual." It is easy to use - you just choose the amount of time you want to cook your food, whether you prefer the "High" or "Low" temperature, and then hit "Enter." There is also a digital readout on the front of the device that lets you know how much time has elapsed since you began cooking. If you're a technophobe, this is certainly the kitchen gadget for you. (And in defense of technophobes, which I sometimes am, you don't want to spend hours reading a manual just to learn how to cook dinner.)

The slow cooker has two latches on the top of the unit for securing the glass lid closed and transporting it to the site of your potluck or church dinner. They are very sturdy and designed to latch onto two hooks on the lid. And the lid is cushioned around the edges with a springy piece of plastic tubing, so you can basically bring the slow cooker anywhere and not worry about it spilling or leaking. It also comes with a black plastic spoon that latches nicely onto the top of the lid. I particularly appreciate the skid-proof feature on the slow-cooker's four legs. I am somewhat accident-prone, and the idea of having our piping-hot dinner skid across the counter, land on the kitchen floor and spatter everywhere does not appeal to me! The slow cooker is well-designed, with most of the models in black, white and aluminum, with one model boldly designed in red (the Ensemble Stay or Go Five-Quart Cooker).

There are many different models of the Hamilton Beach "Stay or Go" Slow Cooker from which to choose. The one we bought is the Five-Quart Slow Cooker, but there are four- and six-quart models as well. The five-quart model is big enough for us, but if you have a very large group to feed, you might consider getting the six-quart model. I should mention that the five-quart model takes up an approximate sixteen-inch stretch of our counter space (twenty inches with the handles unlocked), so if you live in limited quarters, that's something to consider, too. The models vary in price from $29.99 to $59.99, with the priciest models being the "Set 'N Forget" ones, which have an additional cooking setting.

Until fairly recently, I was not overly thrilled with the idea of having a slow cooker in our home. What would happen if it ignited and burned up everything we owned? Well, that hasn't happened to us, and I don't think it's likely to. According to Glenyce Peterson-Vangsness of the University of Minnesota Extension, as long as you follow basic slow cooker safety principles, such as filling the crock pot at a minimum of one-third and by no more than two-thirds, you should be just fine. I have referenced her excellent article on this topic below.

Happy Slow Cooking!

Sources:

Hamilton Beach's website: http://www.hamiltonbeach.com/products/slow-cookers-stay-or-go-slow-cookers.html

A good article on slow cooker safety, by Glenyce Peterson-Vangsness of the University of Minnesota Extension: http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/M1182.html

Here's a good Chicken Adobo recipe for you, from Cooks.com: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1639,156180-235196,00.html