Slow cooker advice

[amyvn]

Well I've finally acquired a slow cooker, and have been perusing the crockpot threads which are a wealth of great-sounding ideas. I really love the idea of having dinner cooking away while I work during the day, but I have some worries about this thing. . .

The only time it's been used so far was at a friend's party, where we used it to keep soup warm. At the end of the evening there were a couple of inches of soup in the bottom, and instead of turning it off my neighbor mistakenly turned it to "high". In a matter of minutes the soup was boiling around the edges and starting to burn . That makes me think that this thing gets pretty hot when it's set to high, but some of the recipes I've been looking at (like the parmesan risotto) say to cook on high for 2 hours or more. Is this normal? I can see that a half-full crock would dissipate heat quite differently, but it was a little alarming.

If it makes a difference, the cooker is an inexpensive Hamilton-Beach 6 qt cooker. I work half of the time from home, so I'll be able to keep an eye on it the first few times I use it; I'm just wondering whether I should be planning on decreasing cooking times or cooking more often on "low". Does anyone out there with slow-cooker experience have an opinion on this?

In addition, if anyone has any vegetarian slow-cooker favorites that will make me fall in love with my new cooker, please feel free to post them!

Thanks in advance,

Amy

[donleyk]

I've experienced the same thing... boiling on high. This is a fairly new CP and I think it just runs hotter. I'm going to use it only on low unless I'm home and the dish needs finished off.

There is a crock pot thread going on, you should look for it. It's veggie friendly.

[LakeMartinGal]

I have a crockpot that runs hot, too. I generally set it one setting lower than the recipe calls for, unless it's a new recipe. The older crockpots didn't get all that hot.