Should I get a new crock pot/slow cooker?

[htc]

I recently got a hand-me-down 4 quart Sears crock pot. It has a low and high setting. It's the kind that doesn't have a removable pot. Anyways, I have noticed that it doesn't seem to cook as well as my old little 1.5 quart crock pot (this one just had on/off setting).

I cooked a pound of pinto beans w/ 1 can of whole tomatoes, 1 diced onion, 6 cloves minced garlic & 2 handful of crumbled bacon. I turned it on before I went to work (about 8am) and got home about 5pm and found that the beans weren't as soft as they needed to be still. It's now 10pm and some of the beans still haven't cooked all the way to the point of soft baked beans. Now is it just the machine? Or is it me? I put enough water in the pot to cover + about 2 inches. Should I have put more water in it??

My old tiny crock pot, it would have been done by the time I got home and I didn't have to worry about water level. On the tiny crockpot it seemed like whatever I did, it was ok. I made beans almost 1x a week before w/ no problems.

Thoughts???

 

[purrfectlydevine]

I saw a Rival, I think, a large oval one, yesterday that you could program the temperature and the amount of time it cooked before it shut off. My 31 year=old Rival has a removable crock and it is great for cleaning. My Mom has a newer Rival (not the one mentioned above) with a removable crock and she made baked corn in the oven in the crock and put it in the crockpot to keep warm until and during serving. Only 1 dish to wash!

 

[GB]

It could just be the beans themselves. If the beans were too old then no amount of cooking will ever make them soft again. Try the same recipe with a new batch of beans and see if that helps.

 

[Zereh]

Dried beans just don't do well in a crock pot, at least from my experience. I think they need some time at a full boil and some intense simmering to get properly done and that just doesn't happen in a crock pot.

Canned beans work great. Or beans that you cook to nearly done on the stove-top and then add to the crock will work wonderfully as well.


Z

 

[Corey123]

To speed up the cooking time, I just throw the dried beans in the pressure cooker and cook them under pressure, soaked or unsoaked, shaving a considerable amount of cooking time off the cooking process. Especially pinto beans.

But to cook them the regular way, I soak them overnight first. Boston Baked Beans especially require an overnight soaking, or they'll take forever to cook. Those are the only dried beans that I've slow-cooked.

I've made baked beans in the slow cooker, BTW.


~Corey123.

 

[Michael_Schaap]

Ahhh..... thats what happened...

Dried beans just don't do well in a crock pot, at least from my experience. I think they need some time at a full boil and some intense simmering to get properly done and that just doesn't happen in a crock pot.

Canned beans work great. Or beans that you cook to nearly done on the stove-top and then add to the crock will work wonderfully as well.


Z

Yeah you know I just did this. Yesterday actually. Just put the beans in without pre cooking them. They were very chewy....did not care for them at all. Thanks for the suggestion... think I'll try this again