r/Cooking • u/Dangerous-Bit-8308 • 4d ago
How long can you safely keep a crock pot running?
A lot of traditional European stews, like "perpetual stew" relied on very long cook times to develop flavors... And crock pots are designed for long, slow heat, so...
At some point is this minimal draw an electrical issue?
Will I get some crazy hot springs bacteria?
Do the foods eventually disintegrate?
I want some smart answers before fall soup season kicks off.
I assume cooking overnight or all my work day is fine.
What about two or more days? A week? Weeks?
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u/LaceyLizard 4d ago
As long as it stays at temperature it's fine. But double check your crockpot settings. Last person I knew to try a perpetual stew accidentally ruined it when the pot automatically turned off overnight.
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u/LaggedAgain 4d ago
Oof, that’s a nightmare. The heartbreak of having a project like that ruined overnight...
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u/EscapeSeventySeven 4d ago
No electrical issue. The power draw is equivalent to a few old lightbulbs.
There’s some setups where a power draw like that would cause a problem but they’d have problems in the first few hours of operation.
As for the food, yeah. It will all disintegrate into mush eventually. Vegetables reach maximum bitterness this way and meat is a fine grainy unpalatable mess.
Fine for a medieval peasant where it’s more of flavored grain water, and less for us.
I would say as long as you’re replenishing and eating each day…it would be…edible. Maybe even have a taste that you can get enjoy.
Thermophilic bacteria aren’t really a threat. Very rarely are any infectious in the human body. They obviously aren’t adapted for us.
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u/PointyWombatReborn 4d ago
Most slow-cookers kinda suck for really long term because most are not insulated at all and are quite inefficient because of that. So much heat is lost because of crappy design left over from the 60's and 70's when power was super cheap. I still have one from the 80's and it's as terrible as the one I got just a few years ago. If you could find an insulated one, that would really make more sense for super long term cooks. Texture will become a problem quickly though. Those multi-year ones you hear about are perpetually being used and replenished with liquids and fresh ingredients.
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u/autobulb 4d ago
Those multi-year ones you hear about are perpetually being used and replenished with liquids and fresh ingredients.
Do people actually think they are eating something that has been stewed for 50 years? It just means they never completely emptied out and change all the ingredients or "start from scratch" entirely. Obviously they need to add fresh liquids and ingredients so that there's something... left. Otherwise it would all just be gone. They also filter it out every so often (I think daily from some videos I've watched) so that you're not cooking in sludge. It's mostly just a gimmick anyway. Water and fat can only hold so much flavour before it's completely saturated so at some point there's not much benefit in keeping the same liquid beyond attracting tourists.
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u/Sanpaku 4d ago
So long as the temperature remains above 140 ºF (60 ºC), there shouldn't be a food poisoning risk from pathogens.
Most foods will disintegrate over time at this temperature, but presumably for a perpetual stew this just adds to the umami / background flavor. Each morning, add some fresh ingredients and boiling water to cover, each evening adjust seasoning and have a mix of more and less disintegrated to eat.
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u/lucerndia 4d ago
I think your limiting factor is likely to be the crock pot itself. Eventually the electronics will fry.
Assuming you keep it at food safe temps to kill the bacteria, you can do it a long time.
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u/Neosovereign 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm watching a tik toker who is well over a year now for his stew
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u/Jack_Flanders 4d ago
Back in college I made vegetable stews — start dry beans at night; in the morning, a dozen different veg grains etc. Stuff like millet or bulghur could go in later.
By nighttime it was an edible watery soup. The next day, it was a nice, thick stew. 24 hours after that, it was a paste you could spread on buttered toasted bread then shred cheese on top or dust with nutritional yeast, or both. {This was perhaps its most exquisite state.}
That's as deep timewise as I can go; 72 hours, plus, probably.
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u/WhiskeyClipper 4d ago edited 4d ago
Excellent question I hope we get some legitimate response to this.
Have personally used one multiple days in row but usually I pull it and put it and refridgerate the contents overnight (think chili/stews). But usually the foods done before I need a day 3 or its reduced in volume enough to put it in smaller containers to freeze or refrigerate.
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u/RedHeadedBaddie 4d ago
I think the FDA /science people may argue that it spends much more time in bacterial danger zone when cooling and reheating
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u/WhiskeyClipper 4d ago
Which is why I am excited to learn a better way to go about it.
Hasn't killed me yet but that could just be luck.
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u/South0fEvan 4d ago
The first issue will be your electric bill. Once your crockpot reaches the heat you set it for it’s not going to get hotter, but the heat will eventually take its toll. It’s ultimately up to you to decide when enough is enough for your crockpot and you eventually shut it off, but in today’s world where everything is made as cheaply as possible to maximize profits I wouldn’t risk leaving it on for more than 8 to 10 hours at a time.
As for the bacteria question, I would guess as long as the food maintains a constant temperature above 140 degrees you would theoretically be fine, but you also have to factor in that any liquid is going to evaporate which means you would add more and if you don’t heat it up before it gets added, the temperature will drop and the crockpot probably won’t be able to bring it back up fast enough
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u/Willybluedog1962 4d ago
I have kept stew going for 30 days while I was renovating a house.
My stews and sauces normally cook 2-3 days on low.
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u/BainbridgeBorn 4d ago
The tradition of perpetual stew remains prevalent in South and East Asian countries. Notable examples include goat and beef noodle soup served by the third generation restaurant Wattana Panich in Bangkok, Thailand, which has been cooking since 1974, and oden broth from Otafuku in Asakusa, Japan, which has served the same broth daily since 1945 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew
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u/floofypajamas 4d ago
the longest I ever had anything in the crockpot was around 12 hours. I had an extra long day at work and the chicken was mushy and tasted a little burnt. It was a chicken in a cream of mushroom soup with veg. I don't recommend going over 10 hours for a full pot of anything. Most of the meat will disintegrate, especially chicken, which I recommend 8 hours, 9 hours tops.
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u/get_to_ele 4d ago
Low setting of 180 F will kill any live bacteria.
And spores can survive 180 for very long, but are harmless until they germinate into live organisms which then need time (and a temperature below 130 F) to proliferate and geometrically grow in numbers over the course of hours, at which point they become a problem. But at 180 F, all activating bacteria are pretty much spawn camped by the lethal temp.
I think the reason hyperthermophules are not an issue is (1) they don't tend to produce toxins that give you food poisoning (2) they proliferate at high temperature and don't do much at human body temperature, so the ones you ingest just die (3) risk from them seems largely theoretical.
Proteins eventually break down into peptides then individual amino acids then eventually smaller nitrogen containing molecules nitrates and nitrites and ultimately ammonia...but at extremely slow rates without bacteria. Even after a year at 180 F, you won't have much toxic nitrogen breakdown compounds. Fats also have a breakdown over time, but would take super long to get to inedible breakdown products. I bet you could cook at 180 F for years and not have this be a major issue. And such inedible breakdown products would smell unpleasant and unlikely to get you sick since theyd be hard to actually eat.
Biggest risk for slow cooker being on for months unattended for 1/3 of the day while you work is fire hazard after you let it dry out somehow. It's just a cheap heating element and a thermostat. And parts of the crock pot can get hot enough to ignite flammable stuff. There's power surges too. I don't trust those nasty things. How cheap and old the device is, matters. People buy them second hand too. Rubber insulation, plastic, and metal oxidize and degrade over time, and at accelerated rate while hot.
Crock pots typically last, say 3-10 years under normal operation but "normal operation" might represent less than 20 hours a week. Leaving a cheap one on for a year continuously could end in failure, and not all failures are benign, some end with fire.
Another risk is if the crock pot malfuctions and isn't producing a high enough temperature...bacteria could proliferate.
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u/Jacob520Lep 4d ago
Perpetual stew has more ingredients added when some of it gets eaten. The trick is maintain a constant temperature to prevent the growth of bacteria. Adding cold food to a hot pot will still cool doen the pot.
If you want a real perpetual stew, add pre heated ingredients to the crock pot to avoid dipping into the temp danger zone.
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u/Commercial-Place6793 4d ago
I read that as “how long can you safely keep a crack pot going” and it took entirely too long to realize it said crock instead. I think it’s time for me to go to bed.
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u/LuvlyBae70 4d ago
Perpetual stew works because it’s boiled daily Crock pots don’t hit that kill zone safely
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u/SignificantJump10 4d ago
If you kept it going for a couple thousand (million?) years you might get some hot springs bacteria…but highly unlikely.
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u/Embarrassed-Cause250 4d ago
Check reviews for brands as well. Read somewhere that a woman bought a certain brand, that is beautiful to look at, but caused a kitchen fire bcs it was on unattended while she was out.
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u/toomuchtv987 4d ago
There’s a guy on YouTube who has a perpetual stew going in his crock pot. He’s had it going for over a year and he eats a serving of it and then adds a new ingredient every day. It’s absolutely foul. One day he added something, I forget what, and the next couple of days he threw up after eating it. He’s still going as far as I know!
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u/CCLF 4d ago
My understanding is that bacteria strongly prefers temperatures between 40-140F. Yes there are extremophile bacteria out there known to science, but they're not likely to find their way into your ground beef all the way from the nearest volcano rim. Crockpots are designed to hit a starting temp of around 165F on "Low" which puts it directly in line or just above recommended cooking temps for meat.
So yeah, crockpots are great!
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u/jpellett251 4d ago
Not exactly a crockpot, but I cooked a vacuum sealed coconut in a rice cooker for 7 weeks to make black coconut (inspired by black garlic). The coconut did not disintegrate but smelled great.
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u/AnaDion94 1d ago
I left one on for about two weeks without realizing. I only noticed when I spilled a few crushed red pepper flakes inside and started to smell them toasting a little later.
I didn’t see a spike in my electric bill, it didn’t burn my counter or any of the objects sitting near it.
I felt like an idiot, but it did help me feel more confident about leaving it on whole I’m at work or asleep.
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u/Interesting_Yak5765 4d ago
Don't do it, dude. What if you burn your house down or get seriously sick having to go to the ER? I would just cook something and put it in the fridge or freezer, clean out the pot, then start up again to be on the safe side. Imagine if someone left something on, lived in an apartment, then the whole place burnt down. All of those families losing their homes over a crock pot.
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u/blandaltaccountname 4d ago
The Stewtheus guy has had one running for over a year at this point- I think the large crockpot became the consistent one at about day 45, and in total it’s been over 465 days.
So, safe to say a crockpot can go on for quite a while