Move a recipe between the oven, slow cooker and pressure cooker
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These are ratios against an oven or hob time, which is how most recipes are written. They are starting points — the first time you convert a dish, check it early.
| From oven or hob | Multiply by |
|---|---|
| Slow cooker, Low | × 4 |
| Slow cooker, High | × 2 |
| Pressure cooker | × 0.3 |
| Air fryer | × 0.75, and drop the temperature by 20 °C |
This is the part conversions usually get wrong. A slow cooker with the lid on loses almost no liquid over eight hours, so a stew that would reduce nicely in the oven comes out thin and pale. Cut the liquid by roughly a third when you move a recipe to a slow cooker, and if it is still loose at the end, take the lid off for the last half hour.
A pressure cooker is the same problem in reverse and worse — it needs a minimum amount of liquid to come up to pressure at all, usually around 250 ml, but almost none evaporates. Add the minimum it needs, then reduce afterwards with the lid off.
Anything that wants long, moist, gentle cooking: stews, curries, pulled shoulder, stock, dried beans, braised shins. These are the dishes slow cookers were built for and they usually come out better than the oven version.
Anything that relies on browning, crisping or evaporation. Roast potatoes, pastry, anything with a crust, and quick greens are all wrong in a slow cooker. Dairy splits over a long cook, so stir cream in near the end rather than at the start. Rice and pasta go to mush unless added in the last half hour.
Brown your meat and onions in a pan first whatever appliance you finish in. No slow cooker will do it for you, and skipping it is why converted stews often taste flat.
The number on a pressure cooker recipe is time at pressure, and it can take ten to fifteen minutes to get there plus time to release afterwards. Add that to your planning or the meal will be late even though the cooking time looked tiny.
A recipe written for the oven will work in a slow cooker, but not for the same length of time, and the liquid needs rethinking too. This converts the time and flags the adjustments that actually matter.
