UKH

Never used one. Do they come with a timer, ie so that they switch on say at 12.00 when I’m at work and my solar panels are most effective?  

Generally the water/stock is supposed to be added hot, so a delayed start isn't really going to be helpful.

I stick mine on in the morning using the auto function and come home to lovely cooked food 10+hrs later. Really good for stews and roasting meat, not so good for vegetables.

Not normally. Posh ones might but you'd get the same result with one of them plugin timers from the pound shop with the fiddly blue clickety segments.

Although really you just turn it on low when you leave. They use so little that if it's daylight you're probably making enough to run it.

Should add you've possibly gone way too far down the rabbit hole if you're really trying to save money by running your slow cooker as frugally as possible. It'll cost you about 35p to run it all day even at today's leccy prices. There is definitely lower hanging fruit.

Aye, I’ve heard they’re not so good for vegetables, which is why I’ve never bothered (rarely cook meat).  

I’m going to buy some of those plug-in timers. I’m on a mission to keep bills down (which we kinda did anyway, but I’m so tight I’m now on a super mission).  

As above, you generally put hot stuff into the slow cooker and it maintains a cooking temperature.  If you put stuff in cold then it'll take ages to warm to cooking temperatures. In addition if you're leaving the house at, say 8 it'll have 4hrs festering at room temperature before it even starts to warm up.

Aside from the food safety issues I'm not sure there'd be much financial benefit. They use very little power.. If you switched it on in the morning it would still be on inside your peak power generation window anyway if running for 8-10hrs, likely with a similar amount of time outside it to if it was switched on at 12.

If it's a working day I turn it on low when I leave and it easily gets warm and cooks nicely for the evening. Yes it'll take a couple hours to heat up but if it has all day that's fine. If you fill it with hot it's obviously quicker but the whole point is lazy cooking.

Great for home made rag puddings....

Solar cookers? ..... Especially atm, should work a treat. 

Or just have steak tartare? Sushi? Pickles/ fermented? Raw... Now theres a path for advancing veganism.

Or a potjke pot on top of the log burner?

Personally I find slow cookers OK, but they do kill the food inside more than they enhance the outcome imo. 

Surely eggs fried on the bonnet of a car...

Try slow cooker veg curries, or even a veg chilli - work a treat in that sense.

Or middle eastern veg "tagine" dishes

^ This. Whats the point of cooking the food and sticking it in a slow cooker to keep,warm? Plus slow cooked meat is much nicer.

Generally not but some do, or you can plug it into a timer plug.  I've started mine cold plenty of times (e.g. when using a tinned tomato base instead of stock) and it's never been a problem, though if it's really hot out you might not want to do that with poultry.

It *doesn't* take 4hrs to warm up.  Probably nearer one hour.

I never precook. Raw veg and meat, then hot stock over the top - means boiling the kettle but no actual cooking. 

The point isn't cooking the meat beforehand but browning the outside of it for the Maillard reaction to make it taste, well, tastier. The same as if cooking a stew on the hob. The slow cooker will never got hot enough for this reaction to take place.  After browning the meat, putting the stock in the hot pan then heats this up, dissolves any flavoursome bits off the pan and it all goes into the slow cooker. 

Do people just put meat in without doing this? It misses out a huge amount of flavour. 

I never bother with browning the meat in advance and it still tastes yummy.

I've tried both ways, many times, and it makes sod all difference to the outcome of a slow cooker meal.

Used to use one in NZ when working. Brown the meat off, put it and anything else in the recipe into the cooker before work. Come home, drain the juice off, make a sauce, cook the veg and dinner. Very easy around kids and work. Now use a rice cooker- sort the rice before climbing, put it in the cooker and leave. Rice cooker cooks and then keeps the rice warm until you come back after your wall session. Just add a bit more water if your wall session is going to be long as getting stuck rice off the base of the cooker is a pain 

I do a mean butternut squash curry in mine. Chuck in some lentils and chickpeas and you're eating like a king 

Pretty sure I read somewhere that it's dangerous to cook dry pulses in them. Tinned are fine, but it doesn't cook hot/long enough to kill the toxins that you find in some dried varieties - as I only ever use tinned I can't remember the details of what is/isn't ok.