Slow Cooker Tip: How To Keep Your Food From Burning (2024)

I have this really irksome problem with all my slow cookers (I have three, somehow?) where they don't heat evenly and they burn my food.

Well they used too. But! I found out two fantastic little tricks that you can do that will keep your crock pot from burning your food so you can safely let it sit for hours as needed.

First you should probably know why your crock pot is doing this. From my research, the heating element for crockpots is located at the bottom (of course) and to the back. Hence why my little one probably doesn't have this problem because the heating element basically takes up the entire bottom.What does that mean? It means that the area the heating element is at, gets more heat. Regardless of what setting you have it on because it radiates out from that spot.

So you could solve this one of two ways.

1. Rotate the ceramic pot once an hour or so to keep everything evenly heated.

2. Properly line your crock pot.

I wouldnot recommend the first option. Crock pots are hot and whats the point at that rate?

How to properly line your crock pot:

Go to your grocery store and go find your trusty aisle where they have the aluminum foil, trashbags, etc.

Buy yourself some aluminum foil (I like to use the XL rolls). Also, there are these fantastic things called crock-pot liners. They look like little plastic bags and fit any size crock pot.

Now that you have these two items, you can prepare your crock pot.

Tear off enough aluminum foil to easily cover (and a little more) the bottom of your crock pot (on the inside). Mold it to the bottom and fold over the edges so it fits the oval and make it as flat as possible.The aluminum will evenlydistributethe heat through the entire crock pot.

Now that you have done that, grab a liner and line your crock pot as per instructions. Make sure it is on top of the aluminum or else it wont work right.

The liners will help for easier clean up, and help keep any other hot spots from burning (aka: the back side of the crock pot wall, etc.)

Once you are done, you simply pull out the liner and clench it up like a normal trash bag and toss it. Toss the aluminum and all you should have to do then is hopefully wipe down your crock pot.

Hope this helps!