jurgrace's Full Review: Rival 38651-C 6-Quart Slow Cooker
Many moons ago, when I was doing my bridal registry, I begged my husband to put a Crock Pot on the list. For several years afterwards, I nagged at him to buy one whenever we passed one in the store. He kept turning me down because he didn't see any value in a Crock Pot and doubted that we would use one. Well, apparently I squawked about it in the right place at the right time, because a few years ago his aunt gave me the Rival 6 Quart Slow Cooker for my birthday, after seeing me salivate over it at Sam's Club. My husband rolled his eyes when I opened it, but by the time I got home from work the next day, he had already taken the Crock Pot out of the box and planned the meals he was going to make with it!
What's this one like? Rival's 6 Quart Slow Cooker is a work of beauty. Occupying about a foot and a half of counter space, this slow cooker is oblong, with a stainless steel exterior with heating elements, and a stoneware inner pot, where the food sits while cooking. The black stoneware lifts easily out of the cooker and looks attractive when placed on the dinner table. The pot also has a glass lid to keep the heat inside while cooking.
In order to cook with the Rival 6 Quart Slow Cooker, you have to set the timer. The timer has a digital display and can be set in half hour increments, up to twelve hours. This Crock Pot has two temperature settings (High and Low), along with a Warm setting that the cooker automatically reverts to when the timer is finished.
Cleaning this Crock Pot is very simple. The outer part of the cooker can be surface cleaned with a damp sponge, or whatever cleaner you use for stainless steel. The stoneware and lid are dishwasher-safe, but I rarely put the stoneware in the dishwasher because it has such a smooth surface that the food usually just slides right off with warm soapy water and a Scotch-Brite pad.
Cooking with the Rival Slow Cooker What can I say about the beauty of cooking with this Crock Pot? You can make almost anything in here, which was proven to me when I found a spaghetti recipe in the manual. Cooking a 6 pound roast or a whole chicken (up to four pounds) is a piece of cake with this slow cooker. You need to season your meat as normal and remember to put any vegetables you are cooking with it in before the meat, but that is all you have to do.
I can turn on the slow cooker before we start our day in the morning, and the food is ready several hours later, depending on what I put in, and at what setting. Food cooked on the High setting will usually cook in about half the time as food cooked on low, but will have less natural juices in it, so you may want to add a little bit of liquid, depending on what you are cooking.
One thing to be aware of is that since the Crock Pot cooks at a slower pace, some larger meats might not look as dark when finished as they would if cooked in an oven. We recently cooked a whole chicken, and the outside looked undercooked when the timer went off. Convinced that it would be several hours until the chicken was ready, my husband started to prepare something else for dinner, when I cut through it and saw that it was white all the way to the bone. We ate it and it was fully-cooked and juicy. You almost never need a sharp knife to cut meat you have prepared in a crock pot.
We have also found the Rival Slow Cooker useful at birthday parties. For two years in a row, we have boiled a bunch of hot dogs before our daughter's birthday parties and put them in our Crock Pot with water on the Warm setting. Guests are always impressed at the idea, and it gives us less work to do preparing food during the party.
Flaws Honestly, the biggest flaw to me with any Crock Pot is the fact that you still have to cut and wash your vegetables before putting them in the pot, so it does not save me too much time in food prep. This is not a big deal for me, once I factor in the fact that I don't have to stand by the stove or oven, stirring or flipping food, and the food usually comes out tastier.
A flaw that actually derives from this product is that its cord is ridiculously short. It's not even a foot long, so depending on how your cooking area is set up, you could be severely limited as to where you use your Rival 6 Quart Slow Cooker.
Just a warning, because of the stoneware, this slow cooker is heavy (around ten pounds), so make sure that you do not store it in a high cupboard.
Final Thought As you can see, I feel very passionately about my Crock Pot. I feel very fortunate that my first one was this Rival 6 Quart Slow Cooker, which has treated us so well, I doubt it will ever be replaced. I highly recommend it as a first, and hopefully last, slow cooker.
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