When it comes to cooking, I am absolutely terrible at it and in the past I have been very much a convenience food person however since the birth of my daughter, I have tried to cook a lot more food from scratch, particularly at the weekends.

At Christmas, my mum brought me a slow cooker and I d not know how I managed without it before I was use it all the time now.

The one I have is by Breville and it is the VTP066 model. The recommend retail price is around £65, as this was a present, I have been cheeky and asked how much she paid however from a quick search online, I can see that prices vary from as low as £35 to the recommend price so if you are thinking of buying, I would definitely do some research and shop around first.

The cooker is stainless steel, it fits in nicely with my kitchen and due to the amount of times I use it, I tend to leave out on the worktop and it does not look out of place. It measures 41 x 31 x 27 cm which also means it does not take up too much room either. As the cooker is quite heavy (over 3kg), I do not think I would really want to be picking this up and putting it away everyday. It has a 6.5 litre capacity which I find is plenty to feed a family of three, there is quite often a lot left over so I can take some for dinner the next day. Inside the slow cooker is a large ceramic bowl which is completely removable meaning if I wanted to let people help themselves to food rather than plating it up for them, I could just place on the table and let everyone 'dig in'. The ceramic bowl is also dishwasher safe; again, I think this is another great aspect of the slow cooker.


The slow cooker has two heating settings, low and high. Low, meaning it will take longer to cook , this is the one I tend to use the most during the week as I can leave food cooking for around 9 hours, at weekends when I am a little more disorganised, I use the high setting as food tends to cook within hours. I have found that which ever setting I use, the food cooks beautifully, if I make a stew, the meat just falls into pieces in my mouth as is really tender.

I have found that using the cooker as given us all a more healthy eating style, my daughter eats loads more vegetables when they are cooked in the slow cooker and mixed in with something than she does if they are separate on her plate.

What I love about this product, is I can spend about 10 minutes at night preparing the ingredients, I then put them in ceramic bowl and place it in the fridge. In the morning, I put the ceramic bowl into the slow cooker and when I get home from a long days work, my tea is ready.

When I first received, I was a little dubious and thought I would only ever use for making a stew, now I not only cook stews in, but also curry, chilli, casseroles, homemade soup - and even for me, they all taste great!

Overall, I would recommend this cooker; it is reasonably priced and has helped me start to cook 'proper' meals - 5 out of 5 stars from me.

Thanks for reading.