Slow cookers, or crock pots, are coming back in style. If you do a Google search for crock pots, you will find more than 3 million entries!

Maybe it’s the money they can save you on a meal – you can buy a cheaper cut of meat, but the slow cooking process will make it as tender as a more expensive cut. It could also be because they are so easy to use. Just throw some things in the slow cooker before you head to work in the morning, and you will return home to a great smelling house and a home-cooked meal.

But I think their energy-efficiency could also account for their growing popularity.

For one, slow cookers are much smaller than your conventional oven. Therefore, it takes less energy to heat them. They are also insulated, so they maintain the heat. And you cook on a lower temperature setting.

Unison, a power company in New Zealand has an online brochure that details the wattage used for different household appliances.

According to those figures, a slow cooker uses 220 watts of power, compared to 3,000 watts for a stove.

Want to pull your old slow cooker out of the cabinet and try it out? There are some great blogs dedicated solely to crock pot cooking:

A Crock Cook

A Year of CrockPotting

 Are you a big slow cooker fan? I have to admit to being one, even when it wasn’t so “cool.”