Do you really need a slow cooker to cook slow?

"Time to hunker down and roast, bake and stew." Nigel Slater

But not necessarily using an actual slow cooker I think. Slow cookers seem to be having a revival and Coles, being a trend follower, has highlighted slow cookers in its current magazine. There are four sections on it, plus various other recipes scattered here and there. Well it is winter. Not that winer is the only time when you can cook slow.

One of the sections is on weird and wonderful things you can make in a slow cooker - like pizza and chocolate brownies, neither of which look particularly tempting I have to say. And why would you do that anyway rather than cooking a pizza in an ordinary oven?

However, it you have one, or are contemplating getting one there are a really useful couple of pages on what to look for, tips and tricks and the best cuts of meat to go for.

Back in the 70s they were big - when they were called crockpots and I think they have had other moments in the sun too. But personally I have never felt the need to get one - nor pressure cookers either - which are sort of an opposite thing really.

The thing that gets pushed by the manufacturers of such things is that it's time saving, in that you can just put everything in it in the morning and leave it cook all day whilst you are at work. Which I actually find a bit of a frightening thought. But it seems it's not as simple as that. Well it's perfectly obvious of course, that if you are putting vegetable in with your meat then you have to prepare them in some way. And it seems it really is best to fry your meat and also probably your vegetables first as well. So already it's not as simple as throwing it all in the pot and leaving it to cook. They say you can do the preparation the night before. But really if you are the kind of person they are aiming the easy peasy, quick thing at, then you are just as unlikely to want to prepare stuff at the end of a working day as you are at the beginning of it.

The other thing they say is that it results in delicious, tender food. Again apparently not necessarily so. There are tips you have to follow here too. Like don't put too much liquid in, and get the quantity of spices and herbs just right and put them in at the right time. Too much and they go bitter, too little and there's no taste. In fact the general opinion seems to be that the main danger is that you will end up with something pretty bland. And as for tender, I saw somebody remark that even after long hours of cooking some potatoes were still not cooked through. The recipes they had in the Coles Magazine looked alright though.

The final advantage is supposed to be that less power is used - although again - there seem to be lots of people out there saying that this is not actually true. And I have to say that I don't see how it can be if it's left on for hours.

Whenever I read about slow cookers, I ask myself the same question - couldn't I do this in a casserole on top of the stove or in the oven anyway? Well yes of course I can. The enthusiasts posit another advantage of the slow cooker being that the food won't burn. Well yes, you can certainly burn stuff that's been left to cook on its own either in the oven or on the cooktop, but really that's just a matter of making sure you check every now and then isn't it?

Slow roasting is very much in at the moment - we had some perfectly delicious slow roast lamb with my son just the other day - but it's really quite easy not to burn it in the oven - just cover it with foil - and if you want to brown it off, do that at the end. Or, as in the case of my Christmas turkey, you wrap it in muslin soaked with buttery basting juices and you end up with something moist yet crispy on the outside.

Mind you slow cooking in a Weber or similar thing can sometimes see you end up with a burnt outside, particularly if you have a glaze. You just need to make sure the fire is always low I guess.

In times gone by people did not have ovens of their own and so they took their food in pots to the baker who cooked them in the remains of the fire in his ovens that had produced the morning bread. Also slow cooking in one pot.

Then there are the British upper/middle classes with their Agas. My brother's family had one, and my sister-in-law too. They always seemed to require immense skill in knowing when and where to put things and for how long, it seemed to me. Today they are gas or electric fired I suppose, but really they are just a modern version of the sort of ovens that my grandmother had. It was called a 'range'

It must have taken enormous skill to cook things like cakes in these. But I guess a slow roast would have eminently possible.

And let's not forget the Polynesians who cook their food on top of a fire underground. When we went to New Zealand back in 2006 we were treated to a cultural evening with the local Maoris that included this selection of pit-cooked goodies.

And my memory is that, in spite of them looking a bit anaemic they did taste good. A little bit smokey but not too much which can sometimes happen in a Weber. They have a stone lined pit here and the food was put in a tray that had been covered with cloth. I can't quite remember what they put on top of that, but I know that traditionally some of the Polynesians dig holes in the earth or the sand, Make a fire and heat rocks on it. Then they line the pit with palm leaves or banana leaves, put in the food, cover with more leaves and then soil or sand and leave to cook. Not exactly time or energy saving - there's a lot of work involved in preparing it all.

Then there is the old hay box technique, in which you bring your stew to the boil, and then put it in a box lined with hay or similar insulating material - seaweed, paper ... cover with more, close the lid and leave to cook over several hours. And now that I think of it, Robert Carrier had a recipe for roast beef in which you heated up the oven really high, put in your beef, and then turned the oven off, leaving the beef to eat in the residual heat. Which is sort of the same concept in a different medium.

These days a young South African has come up with a modern version of the hay box designed to save the poor of South Africa from buying expensive paraffin or burning wood. She calls it a wonder bag.

It's basically a cotton bag lined with insulating polystyrene bubbles - like a bean bag. It's relatively cheap and saves the women from standing over smoky stoves, and putting dangerous fumes into the atmosphere. And it's been a huge success. Which is good.

Yes those polystyrene beads are not great, but she is working on a more eco friendly insulation apparently.

The danger of all of these methods is that the very slow cooking at very low temperatures, may in fact encourage bacteria to grow in the food. Although they recommend that you can overcome this by boiling it all up again before serving.

Me, I think I shall just stick to using my oven or my cooktop. My gorgeous induction cooker will keep things at a very low heat if needed, as will the oven. And as long as I remember to keep checking how it's going every now and then, all will be well. We are blessed these days with sophisticated equipment such as this. But then probably the modern slow cookers are somewhat more sophisticated too.

Oh and I forgot the Thermomix. I have no doubt that that does slow cooking too. At a price.

It's a time-honoured ancient craft - slow-cooking. For craft it is. Even with a modern slow cooker you need Coles Magazine and others to give you the lowdown on how to use it - which leads to somewhat more complicated methods of cooking than the marketing would imply.

"All of them [casseroles & stews] spring from that momentous (though unrecorded) moment in history when someone discovered that they could protect their meat from the fierce direct heat of a fire by insulating it in a clay pot. The advantages were soon obvious, I’m sure: the pot could also contain liquid and vegetables and flavouring which the meat could absorb, and the longer slower cooking made the meat more tender, no matter what part of the animal it came from. Nothing has really changed today, except perhaps for the clay pot, now replaced by decorative oven-to-table casseroles." Delia Smith

And electric slow-cookers, Thermomixes, Aga and Webers ...