Thank you for the link grainlady. I think you are right about finding another crockpot, it is so hot. I purposely did not post the recipe because I felt it would be torn apart, but my best friend made it last weekend for a funeral and it was a huge hit. She used my crock pot too as the second one but was unhappy with the timing on hers, which ran fast and hot.

It is a 3 cheese refrigerated tortellini with canned tomatoes, vegetable broth, cream cheese, fresh spinach and grilled chicken. It might sound awful to some, the crock pot part, but it got raves. I have not had it, and for that matter, don't have to like it.

i am making it for a group of 30 or so tomorrow night and will also have garlic bread, salad and dessert.

Basically everything is cooked so you're just heating. So one crockpot serves 15? What kind of pan are you cooking it in in the oven?

The best way to convert a recipe to oven temperatures is to measure the heat of your crockpot. You can fill it with water and put a thermometer in. Get beginning, after an hour, half way and done temperatures. More if it's a fancy dancy self adjusting crockpot that changes itself to keep warm or something. If the heating of the crockpot is slower than your oven, you can use staged heating, where you heat it to 100°, then 125, 150, etc. Old fashioned crockpots were mostly around 165° for most of the cooktime. Newer ones are more like 185° or even 210°, so the other issue is to make sure that your oven has the low temperatures you're looking for.

Thank you for the help! Well, I am going to use two crock pots. At this point, I don't want to figure out the time it would take in the oven. I have an aluminum, restaurant sized rectangular pan if I wanted to cook in the oven though.

I will play around with this in the future and find the exact temp of the cooker .

I would put that in a covered roaster and stick it in the oven at 225 for about 3 hours.
BUT when I put it all together, I would bring the broth to a boil and warm the tomatoes before dumping in...because it will take a while for all that to get to a safe temperature and may stay too long in the "danger zone" to be safe for meat.....that's my main objection to crock pot cooking....dumping cold food into a pot and cooking on low all day leaves it too long at a dangerous temp.
You can check it after an hour and boost the temp if it's not getting hot enough...or turn it down to 150 if it's bubbling.

I bought another identical crock pot.

I will use it more now that I have two, for this group of people, whom I cook for once a month. They are a recovery group and I want their meals to entice them to keep coming back. They need all the help they can get, however small.

I am adding the par cooked grilled chicken at the end. Perhaps some wintery day I will do the oven thing, but after mentally debating all sorts of options, the crock pot was the easiest, most predictable ( I already know how long is perfect) and coolest. And easiest to transport too as the lids lock.

Update: what I made was yucky to me, but seemingly adored by most, so successful. Many told me how good it was and came back for seconds.

By the time I had some, after 8, and it was done at 5-6- serving time, the pasta was mushy and I encountered some rice-sized hard bits, not sure where they came from. I threw the leftovers out.

The dessert/cake, however, was awesome- lots of compliments- and the bread ok, and the salad good, with many appreciating/noticing the homegrown cukes and tomatoes.

What a day.

I have serious trouble eating what I make for a "mass meal" like that. By the time I have sliced and diced and mixed and tasted....I don't want to touch it again. Enjoy the compliments and consider it a job well done. next time offer the leftovers to someone who loved it.

I use the slow-cooker often when I'm home, just so I can not think about dinner.

I often turn it on to heat as I'm preparing the meat, and turn it to high for the first hour. Then turn it down to low and let it work away.

I do the same thing Jasdip does.... Pre-heat the slow-cooker on high, especially when making a large portion of meat, and keep it on high for the first hour to make sure it comes to a food-safe temperature as quickly as possible.

Both pasta and dairy products are two things that break down in extended cooking. When adding dairy to a recipe I tend to add it the last 15-30 minutes of cooking time - and cook just until heated through. One "fix" for this problem is to use condensed soups (cream of _____) as a substitute for milk if you plan on needing to cook the recipe for a longer period of time.

-Grainlady

There's a big problem with trying to convert a slow cooker "recipe" to an oven. There is no actual conversion temperature because slow cookers vary SO much on their temperature, heating and recovery times. I did some research years ago and posted the results but I don't have the data handy so I have to go by memory. One surprise I discovered was that one slow cooker's "low" temperature can be the same as another's "high" temp. As I recall "low", when tested, ranged from about 135° (even less) to about 225° and high could range from about 180° to about 300°+. Some testing places even lined up a number of slow cookers (identical brand and model) and tested them and even they varied very significantly in temperature.

When I used my one Crock-Pot® slow cooker it was so noticeable on chili if I had it on low for a period of time it was not even a good eating temperature, it was far too cool. So to use it, I had to keep switching between high and low. Admittedly when I used it for chili, I had it too full. You should never fill a slow cooker more than 1/2-2/3 full or you risk these problems. The instructions are clear about it but nobody (including myself) read the instructions. My other one was not a Crock-Pot® brand but had the usual slow cooker limitations. Those and the other issues convinced me to throw away the slow cookers and use electric roasters where you have control of the temperature, much faster heat up times to avoid the danger zone temps and far more versatility. Plus they're usually cheaper than a slow cooker these days too!

Many recipes are not that fussy on actual temperatures. For example some people cook turkeys at 200° while some cook at 300°-350° and still others cook them at 500°.

BTW, the universal slow cooker recipe seems to be: Place items in slow cooker, cook 4-5 hours on high or 6-10 hours on low until done. Serve