I think you need to know the specific temperature inside the warming drawer and how much that varies.

Miele drawer operates at 104°F-185°F (40°C - 85°C), so it won't sear your meat. For Miele combi steam oven, it can be programmed to brown meat at higher temperature first, then to cook slow at lower temperature. Combi would be more versatile, but the drawer is just another option for cooking at low temp, if there is no other cooking space available in the kitchen.

Can you set the temperature and how far does it deviate? I am worried about food safety.

No idea about how far it deviates, wecick. There are five settings per manual for low temperature cooking mode. So perhaps, 5 steps of 5*c each from 65 - 85, just guessing. For food safety, it is the same as other low temperature cooking method, sous vide with water bath or steam oven, cold smoking, it has to be compensated with longer cooking time.

Never thought about it . I'm guessing it uses a lot more energy than a crock pot and some a tad noisy with their fans for all day cooking . YMMV

Yes, it probably does use more energy. I haven't really used the warming drawer so far, so I thought this would be a good idea.

Corie Hall, if meat needs searing for the slow cooker as well...then there's really no point in getting one.

Any ideas how I can go about searing meat in the oven? Do I just put it on full grill and turn the meat every few minutes?

Yes, browning can be done that way with preheated full grill. Preheated fan plus at 225- 230 or even higher would work too.

If recipe asks for browning through out on all sides, and there is a need to turn meat in the oven, perhaps, it is easier to sear meat in a pot or pan before putting the whole pot or pan in the oven or warming drawer. What sort of recipe you are actually thinking of doing?

Good question! :) I don't really have anything in mind. I was actually thinking of taking a look at slow cooker recipes to find something appealing.

I'll try searing on the stove top and using the warming drawer first. If that doesn't work out I'll try the oven next (it probably consumes more power). Should I use a special dish? Lid on or off (or does it depend on the recipe)?

Since you have a Miele Warming Drawer, how bout taking a look at this Miele Warming Drawer Cookbook for some inspiration?

I think you can use any dish that would fit the drawer, and probably lid on most of the time to keep moisture in. If it is going to be in a steam combi, perhaps lid off in combi mode with some percentage of moisture. That probably vary a bit depending what the goal for a dish is.

I slow cook in my warming drawer (Kitchen Aid). I haven't used my crock pot since I got my warming drawer nearly 4 years ago. I never sear meat first (for crock pot or for warming drawer). I do what the OP wants to do - dump, cook, eat. My warming drawer has a Slow Cooker setting for hi and low. When I cook all day (10 hours) I use low, just like I did with my crock pot. I actually use the crock from my crock pot to cook in, but the lid doesn't fit as it has a knob and makes it too tall, so I cover the crock with foil. I have also used a 9x13 baking dish covered with foil. You would always cover your dish for slow cooking.

Thank you everyone for your wonderful advice :)

Chanop, I have the warming drawer cookbook and was browsing through it, but all the recipes involved searing the meat first.

I found this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/236609/honey-garlic-slow-cooker-chicken-thighs/

Seems easy, ingredients are very common and it does not require me to sear first (not that I have something against that, I'm just testing option for very low maintenance cooking). It's been in the drawer for about 2h, just 4 to go :D

I used chicken breasts instead of thighs (because husband hates thighs) and put them in a ceramic pot. Uncovered (I'm hoping the sauce will reduce a bit).

Will come back with results.

Debbi, any idea what the low/high temp is on the KA drawer? Miele has a max of 85 degrees, so I'm using that for this recipe.

Oh, by the way, regarding the noise. It's not noisy at all! The fan only starts every half an hour or so for a few seconds, the rest of the time it's dead quiet.

I would at least follow the directions from Miele and it states the food and dish must be hot when you put it in the warming drawer. I have no idea what KA instructions say. This is because your food can stay too long at a temperature that can promote bacterial growth before it is heated.

Wekick, I think that's just for the keeping food (already cooked) warm. Slowcookers use the same temp. on low (about 190 F), so if it's ok for the crock pot or other slow cooker, I assume it's ok for the warming drawer aswell.

Hi Jo, The slow cooker recipes in the books I have generally included browning or seared as the first step. I used to skip it because I thought it took too much time. Since I've started including this step, I've noticed a significant difference in the color, flavor and general enjoyment of the dish. There are probably some dishes where this step not important. It still save time and I won't consider not owning either a crock pot or a slower because of it.

Chanop's link is to a Miele SousVide book, but it does have some discussion of using warming drawers. Just search the pdf using "warming drawer" in the "find" box.

Also, there seem to be some YouTube videos on using a Miele warming drawer for slow cooking. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE146B9C93A7136FC

That said, I have no experience with Miele warming
drawer/ovens and, if I had a combi-steam oven, as you do --- is that a Miele, as well? ---- I
think I'd be more inclined to use its programming and features over those of the warming drawer for slow cooking.

Seems to me that there are a couple of considerations that can affect using a warming drawer for slow cooking. Warming drawers take a long time to come to full heat and radiant oven heat is not very efficient in transferring heat to cooker pans -- even slower than the conductive heating elements in the slow-cookers. I suspect that is why many warming drawer manuals say something about having food and pans already heated to the right temp before putting them in the warming drawer. When you put something to braise in a bake oven, you typically use a higher oven temperature --- say 250°F --- which helps with bringing the container and contents to the right heat. I would think your combi-steam oven would give you a lot more efficient heat transfer and probably better programming than the warming drawer.

On the subject of searing on the stove top before slow cooking, I agree with Corie Hall that it builds flavor that comes with browning. I've found (and Cooks Illustrated has confirmed) that, when pressure cooking and when doing an extended oven braise with the oven temperature at or above 250° F, the parts of roasts and poultry above the liquid will brown on their own without needing the initial sear. Judging by what I've read about combi-steam ovens, It likely will occur with the combi-steam oven, as well. Never happened for me with my crockpots or warming drawer.

All that said, I do understand the attraction of fire and forget convenience of slow cookers. nobody
should take what I'm saying as belittling that in any way.

I have two Crockpots -- one from the 70's and a decade old semi-programmable model. These days, I only use them for buffet servers. For me, they never really lived up to the promise of "fire and forget" convenience.

I've found that pressure cookers take care of a lot of the braising, stewing, beans and grains cooking tasks and do those tasks in far less time with what I think are better results. For tasks where a pressure cooker doesn't work out, oven braising seems to work better for me than slow cookers like my Crockpots. Of course, neither the oven nor the pressure cookers have any real programming or a keep warm function.

So, if your warming-drawer slow-cooker and steam oven don't quite fit the bill for a true, fire, forget and walk-away-for-all-day stand-alone appliance, then you might want to look into getting an "InstaPot."

While about double the price of traditional slow cookers, these can function in both pressure cooker and slow cooker modes. You can sear in the stainless steel pot insert. They have extended, automatic keep warm functions. They certainly offer more programming flexibility than traditional slow cookers and a good deal more accurate temperature and time control. If you have not heard of these, Laura Pazzaglia's website, www.hippressurecooking.com is a good place to find some reasonably objective information on them.

That was a very good info, jwvideo. The link I gave was definitely for warming drawer. In the UK, Miele markets it with a special name Sous Chef.

Ah, Jo is in the UK. Should have picked that up from the reference to a warming drawer temp of 85. My 250°F references should have been to 120°C.

jwvideo, thank you for all the valuable info, especially for the youtube link :)

So, meal was done and we gobbled it up so fast that by the time I thought of taking a picture there was not much left.

It turned out pretty good. I'm gonna try the oven next. Yes, it's also a Miele, the plumbed in combi-steam oven. I love it to bits and use it a lot, just haven't tried it for slow cooking.

The U.S. Government decided that the old crockpots were leaving food in the danger zone too long. They may vary some but the newer ones will boil on most cook settings now. Chowhounds website has some old threads about this. Some of the posters tested their crockpots and put temperatures they had with their crockpots. From what I have read, the main thing is that you should get the temperature of what you are cooking to 140F within 2 hours.

i have read articles rethinking the safety of sous vide too.

>>>"i have read articles rethinking the safety of sous vide too."<<<

Yeah, me too. While most of the alarm and alarmist writing has been about heating and cooking in plastic bags (risks of leaching plasticizers and other potentially harmful compounds, etc.), I have seen some discussions of concerns about the low temperatures and the widely proclaimed USDA prescription for getting food above the 140° range.

In addition to the chowhound postings that Wekick mentioned, eGullett postings are also worth a look on these subjects.

Anyway, I found and read the USDA rules and explanations to see for myself what the government was saying.

What I found was, shall we say, a bit more complicated and a lot more abstruse than what I had thought of as a simple 40° to 140° rule. Here's a link to the explanation, written in inimitable governmental style, see: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/9ab2e062-7ac8-49b7-aea1-f070048a113a/RTE_Poultry_Tables.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

My take away? Lower temps of say 135° (that's 57°C for the metric
folks) apparently will kill off virtually all bad bugs -- at least Salmonella strains --- provided you leave the food
there for long enough (and provided that interior of the food reaches
that temp within an hour or so of starting.) The safe temps can vary with fat content, thickness, length of time and temperatures. None of this carries over to home canning, btw.

I also found a simplified but more lucid explanation from Keni Alt at the FoodLab site. For anybody interested, the link is: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast.html

jwvideo, you are full of useful info :) Thank you, for the last link especially.

I don't really have the patience to read "gov style", but that article explains it very nicely.

I only have one question: is this valid for any cooking method, or just for the sous vide?

Interesting question that got me thinking. So I did some research.

My conclusion: there is no simple answer and a lot of interesting information to ponder.

Here's what I've come up with so far from plowing through the research I've found.

USDA conclusions about how low and how slow are not limited to sous vide, but will not apply for every cooking method, either.

Basically, the ideas are valid for anything you can safely cook low and slow. "Safely" depends on a lot of factors including the particular food(s) you are cooking and how well you can avoid the possibility of cross-contamination.

You certainly don't want to try this for, say, for cooking unrefrigerated home tomato preserves (what we call "home canning" over here) or anything else that might carry botulism spores.

Beyond that, there seems to be be controversy over how low and how slow for any given foodstuff.

Here's an example to consider if you like roast beef.

Back in the 1950s, cooking gurus Adele Davis (on our side of the Atlantic) and Elizabeth David (on yours) had recipes for roast beef that (IIRC) involved 5 or more hours in a 200°F/95°C oven, followed by a brief sear of the exterior. (Maybe vice versa.) Over here, Cook's Illustrated magazine revived that low temp roasting idea in the mid-90s and even suggested going down to the 170°F temperature which was the lowest that most modern ovens could maintain (at least in North America.)

Those recipes left some food safety experts and critics aghast and vociferous --- the concern being about fear of interior bacterial growth during the long time it took for the interiors of thick roasts to reach "food-safe" temperatures. Other experts felt that the problem bacteria were on the food exterior surfaces and the oven temperatures were suffient to get the surfaces hot enough and quickly enough to kill the bad bugs (or at least reduce them levels that were not a health concern.

More recently, celebrity British chef and author, Heston Blumenthal, one-upped (downed?) that controversy with a recipe that called for a five hours in a 131°F/50°C oven followed by a sear of the exterior with a blowtorch.

Certainly sounds like you could do these recipes in a suitable warming drawer. (Suitable meaning that the drawer maintains a relatively even temperature.)

FWIW, Cooks Illustrated now recommends different techniques for slow roasting beef and and does not recommend them for poultry. The current recommendations are these. For less expensive cuts with lots of connective tissue, 250°F/120°C for five hours. For leaner and more expensive cuts (such as what North Americans call "prime rib"), 20 minutes in an oven preheated to 500°F/260°C, then shut the oven off and leave the roast to sit there (door closed) for 2½ hours or so. I've tried both recipes and both produced very good results.

So far, I have not yet run across anything scientific discussing before and after "bug counts" for Blumenthal's 130°F method. (The info may be out there, I just have not found it yet.) Sounds like a science fair project. Hmmm. While I no longer have a stove with a warming drawer, my current stove's oven will hold a steady 130°/55°C temperature. I do have a blowtorch. A friend of mine is a biology professor with a lab than can measure surface bacteria levels.

But, heck, maybe I should just try the recipe and see if I get sick? ;>P

In the meantime, I ran across an interesting and thoughtful article from Scientific American magazine that might be of further interest. It's sort of halfway between the USDA study and Kenji Alt's simplified digest.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/complex-origins-food-safety-rules/

Thank for the info jwvideo. What do you think about many dishes that are eaten raw, uncooked by heat, or very very raw in the middle? There are a number of dishes around, sushi, sashimi, beef tataki, steak tartare, carpaccio and other for example.

In Japan, there is even raw chicken sashimi dish, but it has to be prepared in a very particular way to avoid and minimised meat surfaced that has been exposed to air by someone who has training so that customers won't get sick.

Yes it is complicated.

"Other experts felt that the problem bacteria were on the food exterior surfaces and the oven temperatures were suffient to get the surfaces hot enough and quickly enough to kill the bad bugs (or at least reduce them levels that were not a health concern."

And this is complicated by the use of blade tenderizing that can introduce superficial bacteria deep into the muscle. It will be required that it be labeled around May 2016 but does not have to be labeled now. Costco blade tenderizes but it is labeled. If you are cooking steaks to med rare, it might not be enough.

I have seen people succumb to foodborne illness or at least be very debilitated so I would be not flirting with the least I could do and maybe still be ok. This type of thing usually affects the young, the old, those pregnant and anyone who is immunocomprised first. I do believe that these types of things have a low incidence but it is still there.

Interesting conversation. Thank you all. We BBQ "low and slow." Pork shoulder, brisket, ribs. Keep the cooker at 225-250F for 8-15 hours. (4 hrs for ribs) Still alive...

>>>"I would be not flirting with the least I could do and maybe still be ok."<<<

Yup. Thus my snarky comments about science fair projects and seeing if I get sick. Good point about the blade tenderizing, though. If there are surface bacteria, it can put them into the interior. No big deal when you do it at home right before cooking. Getting a store bought steak with several days for the bugs to breed --- well, that's cause for concern, eh?

>>>" We BBQ "low and slow."<<<

Me, too. Temps of 200°F and higher aren't the concern. Also, the long cooking times also kill off the bad surface bugs which makes up for temps lower than searing levels. The questions and concerns are about what happens when cooking at much lower temps as with Blumenthal's roasting beef at 131°F.

>>>"What do you think about many dishes that are eaten raw, . . . sushi, sashimi, beef tataki, steak tartare, carpaccio . . .?" <<<

Once upon a time, I had an iron gut and never worried about it. I ate all kinds of weird things in weird parts of the world. I also used to jump out of airplanes. Now I'm old and don't do those kinds of things, anymore.

But I will eat carpaccio etc. if I know exactly who made it and how, where
they sourced the stuff, know exactly how it was handled, and have
confidence in how fussy they are about their kitchen workspace. That's basically me and my friends with local meat.

I'm talking paranoia not Portlandia.

Which brings me to the point that the raw meat stuff is fundamentally different from something cooked at temperatures that I've been educated to think of as too low. Apparently, temps over 130° might still be high enough (when applied long enough) to wipe out most harmful bugs.

Which brings us back to Wekick's wry comment about "flirting with the least I could do and maybe it will still be okay."

I've been doing some reading on this topic and would like to share a very comprehensive guide about temperature and food safety:

Full article

Short version - Food Temperature Guide

I've sort of abandoned the idea of using the warming drawer, for 2 main reasons:

- I don't know the exact temperature that's inside (and I can't control it that precisely either)

- It's not big enough for larger dishes (I have the smallest one).

So I've concluded it would be best to use the combi-steam oven, seeing that it does go low enough and I have the added bonus of adjusting the moisture. I plan on doing some testing with a few cuts of meat after the holidays are over, just to see what the differences are and what produces the best results.

I do like steam cooking, but also like meat with a caramelized exterior. So here's my dilemma: if I sear first and steam cook after, the exterior gets soggy, so that's a definite no.

Should I be steam cooking first and searing after? Won't the core temperature rise further? Or should I just do it on really high heat and for a very short time?

The alternative would be a blow torch (which I don't have at the moment) to brown the exterior.

Anyone with more experience to tell me if I'm right or way off?

Going back to the earlier question of what can be made in crock pots (or CSOs) and whether it needs to be browned....I use the crock pot for meats that my mother and grandmother used to boil: corned beef brisket, pre-seasoned beef brisket and tongue. I have also used it for pulled pork (following the recipe on the seasoning packet). None of the meat is browned ahead of time. Homemade corned beef (esp. In Reuben sandwiches) has been a hit with company. It is very easy to make. Just dump it in and cook 15 hours on low or 8 on high. I assume all of these would also be good candidates for CSOs.

I agree. After all this reading I finally got that it's not only about temperature. It's about time and temperature, and as long as the temperature is above 140 F and it's cooked for a sufficient amount of time it should be safe to eat.