It appears as if creativity can backfire. When the hit TV show, “This is Us,” aired after the Super Bowl with death by “Crock Pot,” the cast began the next day trying to clean up any damage it might have caused a popular brand.
Actor Milo Ventimiglia told Good Housekeeping Magazine, "When I went to my mother and father's house for Christmas, I walk in the door and I go right into the kitchen, no one's around, and the first thing I see is a slow-cooker making chili," he shared. "And I had just filmed all of that! I was like, You gotta be kidding me. This is weird. I took a picture and sent it to my whole cast. So yes, I enjoy the heck out of a good slow cooker. Crock-Pot is innocent!"
Of course, the fictional fire which took the life of the popular TV father wasn’t caused by the cooker itself, but rather by the family’s continued use of an old appliance with faulty wiring. We all have been cautioned about the dangers of worn or frayed cords on any appliance, large or small.
A month ago, I planned to write this column following last week’s inclusion of a recipe for Crock Pot Candy. It prompted me to research the slow cooker. I didn’t expect to find a news story. In my research, I stumbled across the saying, “All Crock Pots are slow cookers, but not all slow cookers are Crock Pots.” Crock Pot is a brand name.
Long before grocery stores expanded services to include delis serving cooked foods, my dad, using an electric roaster oven, slow cooked a dish once a week in his neighborhood grocery, mid20th century. I can still smell that inviting aroma of food cooking as I walked in the door. He put the dish on as soon as he arrived at the store, often a pot of dry beans, soaked overnight, with lots of ham. Initially, he tried slow cooking as an experiment. Immediately, he discovered the popularity of the idea. By early afternoon, the dish was ready to serve and he sold out within the hour.
As a newlywed, I shopped on Thursdays afternoons, the day he chose to cook. As soon as his dish was done, he’d ladle a container for me and store it in the cooler until I arrived in the afternoon after a day of teaching. All I had to do for supper that night was heat up the dish he had prepared.
According to Alison Spiegel with Huffington Post, inventor Irving Nachumsohn, who shortened his surname to Naxon, received a patent for his devise, Beanery, on January 23, 1940. It was based on an idea from an Eastern Europe Jewish tradition of placing pots of bean stew in the hot ovens of a bakery, after they were turned off for the day, to allow food to cook in the residual heat during the Sabbath. In the 1970s, he sold his design to Rival Manufacturing who rebranded it as Crock Pot.
The slow cooker gained popularity as women entered the work force in large numbers in the 1970s. Over time, it lost some popularity, but as of 2011, 83 percent of American families owned a slow cooker.
Bob has always wanted us to serve grits at a fish fry. I’ve resisted because I didn’t want to be tied to the stove stirring a pot of grits. I know slow cookers carry recipes for cooking grits, but I had been hesitant to try. Recently, I’ve learned the secret of cooking a pot of grits on the stove to its proper consistency, then pouring this side dish into a lined slow cooker set to low. It holds this Southern fare to perfection for serving for several hours.
My all time favorite slow cooker recipe came in the original booklet enclosed with my very first Crock Pot.
Chicken Parisienne
6 medium chicken breasts or thighs
Paprika
1/2 cup white wine
10 oz. can of cream of mushroom soup
4 oz. can of sliced mushrooms
1 cup sour cream mixed with 1/4 cup flour
Place chicken in slow cooker. Sprinkle with paprika
Mix wine, soup and mushrooms until well combined. Pour over chicken. Cook on high 3-4 hours. (May cook it on low 7 to 9 hours.) Remove chicken and stir in sour cream mixture. Once blended return chicken and cook another 30 minutes. Serve over cooked wide noodles.
2018