CuisinartMSC-600 3-In-1 Cook Central 6-Quart Multi-Cooker: Slow Cooker, Brown/Saute, Steamer, Silver

This multi cooker is the best. You can cook anything iin it. I fry burgers, ground meat, slow cook a roast, the possibilities are endless.

I have an older round ceramic 4 qt. slow cooker that i have used for many, many years. If I remember correctly I only paid $10 for it which at that time was considered expensive. I adore it but it was lacking some nice improvements. It is round and deep so it is hard to know how food lower inside is cooking and the lid is a small clear (foggy) plastic that doesn't allow me to really see how items are cooking.I saw this oval non-stick slow cooker with glass lid and decided to bite my tongue and spend the money and get what I hoped was going to be a much nicer, more improved slow cooker. I used it yesterday for the first time and I'm in LOVE!!! Oh my, talk about improvements. I only used it for slow cooking this time and was extremely pleased. The large oval glass lid allowed me to watch as the food cooked. The cooker is wider than my old cooker meaning it was not as deep and more food is seen through the lid. Both are 4 qt cookers so the comparison was able to be exact. There was NO comparison. I cooked two large briskets and because the cooker is wider it allowed me to place both so they could both be seen while cooking. The round one needed the meat cut and stacked for cooking. This cooker has a timer that I set (the old cooker did NOT have a timer, I had to watch the clock) and it beeped 5 times when the time was up. It then switched automatically to a warming setting which per the instruction book will beep when it ends. (I didn't let the warming go through its cycle to hear it.) It also can be set to start later in the day or the next day. I am not sure I would use this because I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving food sitting all day to come on automatically at some specified time. I used a Reynolds liner which I found worked great for my older cooker but it really wasn't necessary as this cooker is non-stick but it fit perfectly (better than in the round cooker) and still made it nice to not have to do a major clean up. The lit controls are great. It literally counts down when you set the timer so you know how much longer till the meal is ready.My older cooker is a green ceramic insert that sits in an aluminum cooking pan that has a pretty pattern on it. It matched most of my kitchens over the years. This one is stainless and is an EXTREMELY attractive appliance. My current kitchen is white and stainless so it fits right in but I can assure you the stainless would fit in ANY kitchen.The unit comes with a steamer rack but I haven't used that part of the cooker yet. I also didn't brown the meat in the cooker when I cooked the brisket because I wanted to use the liner. In the near future I'll make some stew and brown the meat before adding all the other items (not using the liner obviously). This slow cooker can do a LOT more than my old green cooker. I can tell I won't be using the old cooker any more. This appliance is WELL worth the price. Well made, simple instructions and simple to use.It came packaged extremely well. I was really surprised at HOW well it was packaged. I seriously doubt it would be delivered to anyone broken (the glass top is the only thing that could break and it is well secured and wrapped in plastic with cardboard securing it in place.The entire experience from ordering it, to delivery, to unpacking, to setting it up, to using it, was simple. If I could rate this appliance higher than a five believe it or not, I would. This was a perfect purchase. If you are comparing different cookers, this one I highly recommend.Update: I've now used this cooker to make stuffed peppers, meatballs in sauce, and Briskette. I have to say it is awesome! I just purchased a second one that I can't decide whether to keep it for my own use (to have a second cooker for holiday functions) or give it to someone as a gift. I will probably keep it for myself since I love it so much. Highly recommend this if you are undecided. You will NOT be sorry.

Love my crockpots, make things so easy

The media could not be loaded. We love it. It is an ideal size for small recipes for 1-2 people, with limited left overs depending on how much you eat, fill your plate or just 1/3 your plate with other sides like a veggie & potatoes or roll. But it doesn't fit everything that you would want to make. Realistically you will likely need both a 3.5 and 5 quart crock pots to select based on the size of the recipe. We still use this 3.5qt most for 2 of us, but have on occasion found it filled too quickly and switched over to the 5qt. Remember, any crock pot should only be filled to 2/3, not the top that is shown in all pictures on any box. We had started with a lot of veggies and potatoes and found we were already at 2/3 on this 3.5qt before we could even add the meat, so we switched to the 5qt. But then you do not want to always use a 5qt either, because you do not want too little in. So we end up using this 3.5qt most for the 2 of us, but have to occasionally use 5qt. The 3.5qt pot is easier to clean because it is smaller and weighs less than the 5qt.The construction and quality of this pot seem very good to us. The lid is standard thickness for crock pots, and there doesn't seem to be any need for it to be heavier while it is cooking. It does build up condensed water around the ring of the lid and bubbles out during cooking as it continually pushed out steam. The 4 settings seem to give you plenty of flexibility, but we use low for most, and the automatic switch to warming mode is nice. The recipe book was actually nice compared to a Crock Pot brand 5qt (that we also like) that claimed a recipe book, but really only added a few pages at the pack of its manual. This one is a nice spiral bound book, but no pictures.We couldn't always just set it and forget it, or just follow the exact time on the recipe. You really have to experiment to find the ideal cooking time for you. We found our recipes are done earlier than the usual 8 hours stated in our recipes, and ended up getting overcooked. So you make it once, realize it is dryer or veggies are overcooked, so you reduce the time next time. So the meals weren't perfect the first time we did any recipe so far, but were better the second time around when we made cooking time adjustments. For example, the first meal shown in the video was overdone, apples overcooked, and meat was a bit tough, which I think you can see in the video. So next time, just cook it less. For some meats, you really should test with a probe thermometer to ensure it is safely cooked, but hopefully only to confirm it is done, not to check frequently because you have to add cooking time every time you remove the lid. For the second meal shown in the video (pulled pork), it too cooked longer than needed the first time, and was better the second time when we checked the temperature earlier and confirmed done earlier. The best success we had with this was making pulled pork. Btw, I skipped showing the steps testing the meat temperature, adding the BBQ sauce, and using a fork to shred the pork.