#”THE MICROBIOLOGICAL SAFETY OF SLOW COOKING IN ELECTRIC CASSEROLES” *Journal of Consumer Studies and Home Economics* (1978) 2,9 1-98.
>Removal of the lid during the cooking period caused a drop in the temperature of the liquid from 2 to 14°C depending on the length of time the lid remained off and the volume of liquid in the casserole [slow cooker]. **The liquid took over an hour to regain this loss** during the cooking of pork and lamb; and this might allow a slower rate in the destruction of harmful bacteria if the cooker was opened during the early stages of cooking
(A drop from 167 to 140 F is equivalent to a drop of 14 °C)
[Here is a link to the full text (no paywall).](https://momot.rs/d3/y/1706485331/500/i/scimag/0/10.1111/j.1470-6431.1978.tb00309.x.pdf~/gurap6eGSeGQGlN7jfoMgQ/THE%20MICROBIOLOGICAL%20SAFETY%20OF%20SLOW%20COOKING%20IN%20ELECTRIC%20–%20E.%20ANNE%20PAGE%20–%20International%20Journal%20of%20Consumer%20Studies%2C%20%232%2C%202%2C%20pages%20–%20John%20Wiley%20and%20–%2010.1111%2Fj.1470-6431.1978.tb00309.x%20–%2078284df0dc39f3eeb97ff63bf79fb54a%20–%20Anna%E2%80%99s%20Archive.pdf)
by Ublind
11 Comments
Some caveats:
– modern slow cookers are more powerful, so it likely would come back up to temperature faster
– they measured temperature every 5 minutes.
– Didn’t say for low long they removed the lid. From Figure 1, it looks like they removed the lid for less than five minutes, once during cooking (indicated on the graph). They were just swabbing the meat to test bacteria, so I don’t imagine it would take a whole 5 minutes. That follows my bias though.
If anyone finds more modern research published in a peer-reviewed journal, please post.
If you lookin, you’re not cookin.
You’re really overthinking a pot that gets hot
Oh fuck. This is going to be like a massive fucking homing beacon to the “*opening the lid does **nothing***” brigade.
You are in my thoughts and prayers OP. You’ve done the deity’s work today.
That probably why mine takes so long, I’m always checking 😂
Okay, but I have never needed to take the lid off for 20 minutes at a time. And even with that the core temperature of the roast doesnt budge.
The study says that this drop in temperature is related to how long the lid is Removed, but does not say how long the lid was removed. Is it 2 minutes or 20?
Second to note, that the temperature of the liquid drops but the temperature change in the meat is much less, these cannot be used interchangeably.
Which means that, so long as your food has reached the safe temperature to kill bacteria for that meat, removing the lid won’t affect food safety. And it largely won’t impact overall cook time significantly.
As someone who has cooked a bunch of weed butter in a slow cooker with a thermometer inside, taking the lid off and stirring the contents definitely does not result in a drop that takes 60 mins to recover from, so how long the lid is off is an important factor here.
Drama in the slow cooking sub is really poppin off today I see
I can’t even imagine how long you’d need to have the lid off of a full heated and running slow cooker for the temperature to drop 27 °F, but I can say with confidence that it would take much longer than whatever purpose a regular person would have the lid off.
Fair enough, can’t argue with the facts. I’m still gonna give it a stir halfway through though