January is National Slow Cooker Month, in celebration of an appliance that continues to feed millions of households across the globe, 45 years after its first unit was sold and eight decades after its inception. The ancestor of what we call crockpot was developed in the 1930s by Irving Naxon, a prolific inventor, who was inspired by his Lithuanian grandmother’s stories about cholent (a Jewish stew) using the fading heat of the local baker’s oven to cook the dish overnight. Naxon integrated the crock inside a casing that contained the heating element, allowing for a “long and slow” cooking process. The appliance was called the Naxon Beanery. In 1970, Rival Manufacturing rebranded the Beanery as the Crock-Pot, and the rest is history. The original Crock-Pot sold about 80,000 units in 1972 and exploded to around 3.7 million units in 1975. At the market’s peak, about 40 different companies were making [...]
