Life in the Slow Lane - Longreads
“When the Crockpot first came about, its dependence on tins and shortcuts was in direct opposition to the other culinary movements of the time: Julia Child was becoming a household name, teaching readers to debone ducks and make croissants from scratch, giving advice on batteries de cuisine and classical sauce; Alice Waters was bringing the Californian culinary philosophy of only the freshest produce into the kitchen, and fiddling with it as little as possible.
Whereas, for Crockpot evangelists, every shortcut was fair game. Even today, when we fetishize whole foods and provenance, most modern slow cooker recipes retain a penchant for jars and packet mixes. This underscores the strange niche slow cooking has consistently occupied: a desire to cook, but a willingness to get there with as little effort as possible. All of which begs the question, what is cooking from scratch? What qualifies as home cooking? Who is gatekeeping this, and why?”
Food writer Olivia Potts’ essay “Life in the Slow Lane” takes us on a surprising journey into the history of slow cookers—and the diverse lives of the people who use them: