Yes, Your Slow Cooker Can Save You Money This Summer. Here's How

Cooking food low and slow (often called braising) is the best way to get tough, cheaper cuts of meat fork-tender and full of flavor. You can slow cook in your oven and get great results, but a slow cooker or Instant Pot will do the same work and require far less energy. Slow cookers are some of the simplest kitchen appliances to operate -- the original set-it-and-forget-it machine -- but you may not have considered how much money these culinary workhorses can save you in the course of a year.

These days, with energy costs as high as they are, we're looking at all the ways you might trim money off your monthly bill. Small shake-ups in your routine can add up to serious savings, and one of those could be opting for a slow cooker or Instant Pot over the big oven. 

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To see how much you can save you using a slow cooker or Instant Pot (multicooker) in place of the oven, I priced out the cooking time and cost for a pork shoulder recipe -- a relatively cheap cut of meat -- using all three methods. The savings are significant and the more you use your slow cooker or multicooker, the greater they'll get. 

How I got these numbers

The easiest way to figure out how much a pressure cooker or slow cooker might save you versus using the big oven is to calculate the wattage pulled per hour, versus how much an electric stove would use. For the purposes of this exercise, we'll compare the energy draw from a full-size electric stove to that of a standard 6-quart slow cooker and a 6-quart Instant Pot pressure cooker. It's difficult to prorate the wattage pull for lower temps so I calculated each appliance at its max energy draw, even though you probably won't generally be cooking on high for these long sessions. The slow cooker and oven totals would likely drop a bit if they were set to lower temps. The Instant Pot would not.

I used one of Food Network's top-rated recipes for each to calculate the time needed and the total cost to cook a large pork shoulder (classic slow-cooked food) using all three appliances. It's worth noting off the bat that pressure cooking with an Instant Pot takes significantly less time than slow cooking in an oven or a slow cooker.

• Traditional oven slow-roasted pork shoulder
• Slow cooker pork shoulder
• Instant Pot pressure-cooked pork shoulder recipe

How much does an electric oven cost to run?

To determine electric oven consumption, you'll calculate the wattage pull per hour of cooking. Most electric ovens draw around 3,000 watts, depending on the temperature.

Electricity rates also vary widely by state. To find yours, you can consult this chart with the 2020 prices listed in cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). The prices for 2021 won't be released until December 2022 but if you do some searching, you should be able to find the latest prices.

Once you find the wattage of your oven (either on the appliance's tag, the owner's manual or an online product listing), multiply that number by the number of hours you use the oven each day. Then divide by 1,000 watts (1 kilowatt) to find the kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity consumed.

Next, determine the average price per kWh of electricity in your state for the year according to the US Energy Information Administration. Multiply that amount by the number you just calculated (3, in this example) to determine your operating cost per day. 

Working with New York's electricity rate of 17 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), a 3,000-watt oven would cost me about 51 cents per hour. For the full seven hours, it takes to properly slow cook a 6-pound boneless pork shoulder in the main oven, it will cost about $3.57.

How much does a slow cooker cost to run?

Slow cookers are also electric, so you'll use the same methodology as above to find their cost. The wattage pull for slow cooker models varies and larger ones will use more energy. A standard 6-quart slow cooker has a max output of 260 watts.

Using these figures, we can determine that a slow cooker uses about 9% of the total energy draw of a large oven. Again, factoring in New York's electricity costs, we can safely say a leading six-quart slow cooker will cost about 5 cents per hour. That's 91% more energy-efficient than the average full-size electric oven. The pork shoulder recipe calls for eight hours of cooking, which would cost you a total of about 40 cents using a slow cooker.

How much does an Instant Pot cost to run?

A similar recipe for pork shoulder cooked in an Instant Pot called for one hour of cooking for a four-pound pork shoulder cut into pieces. Instant Pots will draw different amounts of energy based on the setting. For pressure cooking, a standard 6-quart model will draw about 1,000 watts or one-third the energy draw of a big oven.

Knowing this, we can determine that in New York State, it will cost you about 17 cents per hour to pressure cook. Because this recipe is for a smaller pork shoulder cut into pieces, I'll add 30 minutes to that cook time. That would net a grand total of about 26 cents to cook a similar 6-pound cut of meat that's not diced into pieces in an Instant Pot.

How much can a slow cooker or Instant Pot save you?

Of these three methods, the big oven is the most expensive way to cook low and slow by a good margin. While $3 of savings might seem small, if you expand it out over a year of long braises and slow cooks, it could save you some serious dough on your overall energy bill. If you slow cook once per week, that's a quick savings of $150 for the year.

All is not equal: One big consideration

One big caveat is that these three cooking methods, while similar in some ways, don't deliver the exact same results. Many people swear by braising meats and slow cooking in the real oven, even if it takes longer and costs more. And they might not be wrong. With pressure cooking, for instance, I've never gotten exactly the same result as with slow oven-roasting, but certain recipes come pretty close. People are also critical of slow cookers for their propensity to make food emerge a bit mushy, not just tender, when used for long periods. 

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Bonus: Instant Pots are cheap and slow cookers, even cheaper

If it's trimming money from your monthly bill that's drawn you to the slow cooker or Instant Pot, you likely don't want to shell out a ton of money to buy one. The good news is you won't have to: A 6-quart Instant Pot can be had for around $80 (less if you find one on sale) and slow cookers start at around $40. It's also worth noting that every Instant Pot also has a slow cooker function, so there's really no need to stock your kitchen with both.

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