Pfmastin, below is the link to Amazon's page for Nesco's. Which one did you buy? I have a question. My old crockpot has the "circular" elements in it and it never browned chicken. How does the roaster brown meat when the condensation drips down on it from the lid? Although most of the reviews are good, many say it's too hot on the outside & you can burn yourself. How does that help keep the kitchen cooler? I'd love to bake a chicken in there and have it crisp up! And is the 6 qt. big enough for a large chicken?

If you want slow and low, you might want an old style Crock Pot from a garage sale. I forget when they changed the temperatures, but they used to be made for 8-10 hour cooks, and now they are meant to be done in 4-5 hours. There are ones that have fancy temperature settings, however, that let you have some control. The crock pots that just have low and high apparently are meant to get to the same temperature on both--just past boiling--but the low cycles slower and cooks slower. Some have a keep warm setting that some people have found works well for them with the old fashioned crock pot recipes. Crock pots were invented by a guy who wanted to make cholent--a bean stew that used to be made in the banked fires of community bread ovens overnight for the Jewish sabbath. He really expected his to run for 18 hours or more. They were very straightforward. The new kind confuse me with their too high temperatures. The whole premise was supposed to be that you could leave it all day without touching it. The government got into it and said that people would open them early and eat foods that hadn't had a chance to come to safe temperature, so even though people have been cooking this way for millennia and living to tell the tale, we have to be protected from those who won't follow instructions. Sigh. I can't recommend models. I can just say to research well and be aware of what the new one can do and how it fits your expectations.

I have a 1980's Hamilton Beach slow cooker - very large, several gallon capacity, thick pottery crock pot. It will automatically switch from "Hi" to "Low" after a few hours if I set it on that mode. Because it's so large and because there's just the 2 of us to cook for mostly at this stage of our lives, I bought a smaller Crock-Pot brand slow cooker. Oval-shaped (which I like), but it doesn't have the automatic switch-to-low feature. Plus, the "low" setting is too "high" just to keep things warm without continuing to simmer. My experience with it so far is it cooks too hot to be called a "slow-cooker" lol. I'm not opposed to spending money on good quality cookware, but I honestly can't bring myself to spend over $250 for a slow cooker and I really don't like the way the All-Clad looks. Maybe I'm just too Yesterday :0) seagrass

Could be worse. Could have used the "3 packet pot roast" which includes Italian seasoning packet, or go for broke with a packet of onion soup thrown in for "good" measure. Maybe some cream of mystery soup "gravy". Although butter is usually a good ingredient for a lot of things I'd use it for browning the roast with a good rub or better, use bacon fat. And the slow cookers (the washboard, 300 baud modem or crank telephone of appliances) of any brand were tossed from my kitchen decades ago, it's Nesco, oven or stovetop in this house. I learned that lesson a long time ago. Oh and for your punishment you're not getting off with just a simple switch. You need to bury it in 2" of ketchup and chow down. Maybe some Jiffy Mix cornbread, and a bagged salad on the side! :D