Converting oven recipe to slow cooker

Question

I have a casserole recipe that I generally cook in the oven. I'd like to try it in my slow cooker for several reasons: convenience, timing, opening up the oven for another dish. Is there a general rule of thumb to convert the directions for the oven to an equivalent for a slow cooker?

Answer 1

Roughly speaking, the low setting on a crock pot is 200 degrees Farenheit, and the high setting is 300 degrees.

Crock pot time vs oven time:

• 4-6 hrs on low = 15-30 min oven
• 6-8 hrs on low = 35-45 min oven
• 8-18 hrs on low = 1-3 hrs in oven

In addition to the liquid notes above, you may want to make these changes as well:

• reduce the amount of whole/leaf herbs by half
• add ground spices during the last 30 min of cook time
• you may prefer to brown meat before cooking in the crock pot; it's a flavor & fat issue
• add rice or noodles in the last two hours of low cook time

Answer 2

I'm not sure there are any hard and fast rules, however, slow cookers tend to retain liquid better that casseroles, so reducing the amount of liquid by perhaps a third or even a half, is probably a step in the right direction.

What I've done in the past, is find a recipe for the slow cooker, that's similar to one I would cook in a casserole and work around that. It's worked out pretty well, so far. :)