Happy middle of February – the month that leaves as quickly as it comes, with only 28 days. It’s still cold outside, and I guess that’s the weather for a while since Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Groundhog Day, predicting six more weeks of winter. So, don’t put away the slow cooker!
Yes, I know that slow cooker month is January, but we still need it. I made an awesome Italian beef recipe in my Crock-Pot recently. It’s the OG of slow cookers. My Crock-Pot, manufactured in Sedalia, MO, was, I believe, a wedding gift from my first wedding – and we’re still together!
Long before it became the go-to method for cooking over the course of a day, earthen oven cooking was the slow cooking method for Indigenous people, fueled by heated clay or hot stones. Hawaiians buried a whole pig wrapped in banana leaves in earthen ovens. In Central and South America, they roasted meat, fish, and vegetables sealed with dirt or leaves. And in North America, research dates earthen oven uses to 10,000 years ago – which explains the Navajo’s Kneel Down Bread, East Coast region’s clambake and the South’s barbecue - slow cooked meat in underground pits or raised ovens.
The original slow cooker design is the invention of Irving Naxon, born in New Jersey in 1902. His slow cooker, a solution to cooking in the summer heat, originally went to market in the 1950s with little success. He named his slow cooker the Naxon Beanery – ideal for cooking beans. He retired in 1970 and sold the business to the Kansas City based company Rival, who, according to their president, bought it as an “afterthought.”
The home economist in the test kitchen at Rival discovered it could make more than beans and invented recipes for it that were nutritious and affordable. The newly re-named Crock-Pot arrived at the 1971 National Housewares Show in Chicago, dressed in the colors avocado and harvest gold, selling for $25.
Its slogan “cooks all day while the cook’s away,” promised middle-class American women the convenience and freedom to spend less time in the kitchen. You can find original Crock-Pot recipes called “Busy Woman’s Roast Chicken” and “Pork Chop Abracadabra” - mostly midwestern recipes that nothing a can of cream of mushroom soup couldn’t fix.
If you don’t own a Crock-Pot, you may have its cousin the Insta-Pot. I have an Insta-Pot, too. It’s nice, but it has a metal rack insert, two warning labels, and a red and white round plastic ring that I’m not sure what to do with. My Crock-Pot has a cord and a lid. Sometimes less is more.
The Insta-Pot, invented in 2010, is an electric pressure cooker and can do the job of a rice cooker, yogurt maker, steamer, sauté pan – and, yes, slow cooker. I don’t know if my Crock-Pot can do all of that, but I don’t need it to. I just need it to fill the kitchen with the smell of food that has worked all day for me and greets me with something warm and delicious.
By the way, supposedly February only has 28 days because the Roman King Numa had originally made all months 29 days, as Romans believed that even numbers were unlucky, but the sum of all the months was an even number. So, February (the month associated with rituals for the dead) was chosen as the unlucky month to consist of 28 days.
The first day of Spring isn’t until March 20, so slow down and enjoy the rest of winter. With your slow cooker.
