Rival 5 Qt Programmable Slow Cooker

7 Best Slow Cookers, Tested by Food Network Kitchen

We cooked all day long to find the slow cooker that will be the perfect fit for you!

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Our Top Slow Cooker Picks

Slow cookers have come a long way since their heyday in the early '70s. No longer just for cooking stews and tough cuts of meat, slow cookers are used to make everything from overnight oats to authentic Indian curries. In fact, there are dedicated slow-cooker cookbooks for all kinds of popular cuisines and diets: Mexican, Thai and Indian, as well as paleo and keto diets.

Slow cookers have also stepped it up when it comes to special features. In the past, your only cooking options were High, Low and Warm. Now, you can steam meat and vegetables, make rice, saute — some even stir the food for you! With all of the options out there, we're sure we found a slow cooker that suits your needs.

We updated this guide in February 2021 with two new picks, including a new favorite overall. We still love many picks from our original test. Read on for our list of current favorites.

Your Slow-Cooker Primer

The idea is to "set it and forget it," but there are some basic guidelines that will ensure you get the best results.

Don't under- or over-fill a slow cooker. Most machines advise to fill at least halfway to make sure the food isn't over- or under-cooked. When crocks are filled below the halfway point, food can be done as much as one to two hours earlier than the recipe states.

Add dairy at the end. If your recipe calls for dairy products, add them toward the end of the cooking time; they can curdle if cooked for too long.

Remember, liquid doesn't evaporate. If you're converting a recipe like stew, soup or chili to a slow-cooker method, you will not need the same amount of liquid as the stovetop version. Slow cookers do not allow for the liquid to evaporate, as the crock is closed throughout the cooking process. If the end result is too thick, you can always add more liquid at the end.

Veggies are meat's best friend. When cooking fatty cuts of meat, make a bed of root vegetables or onions on the bottom of the crock so the meat does not cook in the fat that will be released. Keep in mind, using this method will put the vegetables super close to the heat source, located at the bottom of the machine, so you'll want to choose something hearty (or firm) that can withstand the heat over a longer period of time.

How We Tested

We tested 12 popular, well-reviewed slow cookers. One of the most-important aspects of a slow cooker is the temperature. You need it to heat high enough that the food will cook safely but not too high to scorch or overcook over a long stretch of time.

We made stew and checked both the exterior temperature (with an infrared thermometer) and the interior temp of the food at one-hour intervals throughout the cooking time. We then checked to see how quickly the slow cookers dropped the heat once switched to Warm — a good indicator of the likelihood of overcooked food.

We also checked how easy they were to clean and how user-friendly their controls (interfaces) were. We eliminated four models based on poor cooking results, chemical smells, poorly sealing lids and basic programming.