Your Holiday Gift Guide - Hamilton Beach Slow Cooker

This week on the Holiday Gift Guide I'll be reviewing my beloved slow cooker.

This here folks is the Hamilton Beach Set 'n' Forget Programmable Slow Cooker.

If you follow my blog, I've mentioned it while making the Hearty Chicken Enchiladas and delicious moist and tender Chicken Wings.

Needless to say, I am a BIG fan of this amazing piece of machinery.

Let me tell you a little about our friend here.  We all know the beauty of a slow cooker - you get to put it on, walk away, and let it do the work for you.  But here's my problem - I don't work 6-8 hour work days.  That means that I can never really do that.  Instead I have a couple of options - don't cook in the slow cooker during the week days; turn it on in the morning and come home at lunch to turn it off, leaving my food cold; come home at lunch and turn it on so that dinner is ready around 8pm.  Technically, those are all decent options that I've dealt with for a couple of years.  But dude - who wants a cold dinner? Or a late dinner?  Or no dinner?  Have we met?

So instead I asked for this little beauty for Christmas last year.

Here's what this guy can do:

• Cook on a manual setting - just like any other slow cooker
• Cook based on programmed time
• Cook based on temperature measured by an attached probe thermometer (this one's my favorite option)
• Keep your food warm once it's finished cooking
• Lock the cover with clip-on thingy-magiggers and carry this guy anyplace without spilling a drop
• Take the whole thing apart and stick all the needed pieces in the dishwasher

All this means that I can get my act together in the morning, put my food in, choose my favorite option with the probe, set it to a temperature indicated in the recipe or in the handy attached guide, and go to work!  (Quick piece of advice - don't forget to turn it on.  I have done that.  Cold food is not cool).  Then come home hours later to a hot meal that stopped cooking exactly when the food reached a certain temperature, then switched to "keep warm" setting!  I'm sure the other options are wicked cool too, but I love the temperature probe.

I've brought my Hamilton Beach Slow Cooker to a couple of work potlucks since it's super easy to transport things in this slow cooker, powered it on, and let things cook to a perfect temperature without drying the content out.  As a result, about 2 coworkers went out and bought one themselves.

As for the cons - I honestly cannot think of a single one.  I guess it's a little big, but I actually wanted a bigger slow cooker since mine only fit an itty bitty amount.

So there you have it folks.

For more ideas for your holiday gifts, don't forget to check out the Living Like the Kings Holiday Shopping Ideas.  (I just added a slew of new items to it!)

Here's a bonus this time around - if you have items you love, reviewed, etc and want to link up, I've created a Linky Tool.  Enter a direct link to the review and include the product name in the name.