🍲 Slow Cooker Time Converter

Three bands, not a multiplier

The converter does not multiply your time by anything. It drops the oven or stovetop minutes into one of three brackets and reads off a range:

original time      Low setting     High setting
up to 30 min       4-6 hours       1.5-2.5 hours
31 to 45 min       6-8 hours       3-4 hours
46 min and over    8-10 hours      4-6 hours

A 45-minute braise becomes 6-8 hours on Low or 3-4 on High. Notice how the ratio collapses: 30 minutes stretches by roughly ten times, while a 3-hour oven recipe stretches by about three. Long recipes are already cooking slowly, so there is less left to slow down. The top band is also open-ended - a 4-hour recipe returns the same 8-10 hours as a 46-minute one, which is where you should start trusting a thermometer over the chart.

Low and High are the same temperature

Both settings level out around 95°C / 200°F. High simply gets there in an hour or two rather than four, which is why every Low figure above is close to double its High figure. Choose High to finish sooner, Low for tougher cuts that want the long plateau to break down collagen.

• Cut the liquid by about a third. A sealed pot evaporates almost nothing, so an oven recipe's liquid ends up as soup.
• Add late what cannot take eight hours - cream, milk and soft cheese split, pasta and rice turn to paste, fresh herbs and peas go grey. Last 30 minutes for all of them.
• Brown the meat first. Nothing in the pot ever gets hot enough to brown, so skipping that step costs you most of the flavour.
• Leave the lid on. Every peek costs roughly 15-20 minutes of recovered heat.

Frequently asked questions