This week’s edition of Slow Digest was written by C21 Graduate Fellow Jamee N. Pritchard
Slow Cooking: Worth its Wait in Flavor
One of my core olfactory memories is the smell of my great-grandmother’s white beans and ham slowly cooking in her Crock-Pot throughout the day. The night before, she’d sort the beans and then soak them overnight. Come morning, she’d rinse the beans, cube her ham, chop carrots, celery, onion, and garlic, and place them all in the Crock-Pot, immersed in her homemade chicken stock. She’d set it on low, and we’d go about our day – cleaning, laughing, talking, and watching our favorite show, Matlock. About an hour before the ham and beans were finished, Granny made honey cornbread to go along with the meal that took more than10 hours to make. For me, white beans and ham is a comfort meal, best prepared in a slow cooker to evoke those memories of my granny.
With the fast approach of holidays and winter celebrations that center family, friends, and comfort foods, some of us may be pulling out slow cookers to help us prepare our dinner tables. Thus, this week’s post focuses on slow cooking and America’s (re)introduction to efficiency and slow food from a decade when brightly colored kitchens and innovative appliances were all the rage. It is about returning to the flavor of Grandma’s slow cooking and evoking the memories and emotions of the tastes and smells of the foods from our childhoods.
Kitchen appliances in the 1970s slowly improved how middle-class Americans cooked, cleaned, and entertained. We were introduced to kitchen trash compactors, four-slot toasters, double ovens, built in ice-makers in refrigerators, and automatic electric percolators. In 1971, Rival Manufacturing in Kansas City launched the Crock-Pot, an appliance that was patented by inventor Irving Naxon in 1936 and that was inspired by a Jewish stew of meat, beans, and vegetables, called cholent. This stew was slowly cooked in crocks on Fridays in preparation for the Sabbath. Jewish families gathered their ingredients before nightfall and took them to their towns’ bakeries to slowly cook in the still-hot ovens that would slowly cool overnight.[1]
Debuting at the National Housewares Show in Chicago in 1971, the Crock-Pot was advertised as a time saving device. Its stoneware liner was easily lifted out of the pot for easy serving and cleaning. With its purchase, home cooks received a small cook book with recipes like Boston baked beans, Hot Pineapple-Cranberry Punch, and Stuffed Cabbage Rolls. This slow cooking made meats tender and food more flavorful. It also offered working, middle class women, to whom the appliance was marketed to, convenience as well as the comfort of a home-cooked meal.
In Wisconsin, the West Bend Company launched its own line of slow cookers that revolutionized how home cooks baked, roasted, grilled, and even popped popcorn. The company’s newest addition to its slow cooker line-up in 1977 was the Slo-Cooker Plus, a butterscotch porcelain-on-aluminum cooking pot with a heating base that could be used as a small griddle for cooking bacon, eggs, and pancakes. According to the product literature, “the cooking pot is conveniently shaped like the foods you want to cook – a whole chicken, a ham or a rolled roast. Even a 9×5 inch loaf pan fits inside the cooking pot for baking quick breads and cakes.”[2] The Slo-Cooker Plus, like other slow cookers in the West Bend line, adjusted to the home cook’s personal time schedule and offered them a style of cooking that harkened back to what the company called the “unhurried past, but with the ease and convenience that’s in tune with our jet-age style of living.”[3]
While slow cooking and the idea of slow food offered efficiency and convenience in a fast-paced world – now and in the 1970s – it is more than a return to the “unhurried past” of an older style of cooking. It’s a time to slow down, rest, connect with, and appreciate the people for whom we are most thankful. It’s also about taking comfort in the memories of our grandmothers’ kitchens.
[1] Smithsonian Magazine, “A Brief History of the Crock Pot,” Smithsonian.com, November 26, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/brief-history-crock-pot-180973643/.
[2] Slo-Cooker Plus Automatic Cooker Demonstration Script, undated, box 42, folder 28, West Bend Company Records, Milwaukee Mss 121, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, Archives Department.
[3] ‘Lazy Day’ Slo-Cooker Potpourri of Flavors, Recipe Booklet, undated, box 108, folder 3, West Bend Company Records, Milwaukee Mss 121, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, Archives Department.