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Try first?



The traditional Dutch Hay Slow Cooker is a wooden chest lined with cotton bags filled with hay. Both wood and hay are insulating. Anything that keeps a person or a home warm can work as a pot insulation: hay, a blanket, a sleeping bag, crumpled newspaper, crumpled tissue paper, corrugated cardboard, wool, rags, a cooler, etc.



If you want to try first before making one yourself, wrap your hot pot in a blanket or sleeping bag and see how it works.



Requirements for your own design



1. Fit

The pot or pots should fit inside the Hay Slow Cooker so as to touch the wadding loosely from all sides. The wadding should be soft and loose like a pillow, not packed or stretched tightly.



2. Heat resistant inside

Before making the version of the Hay Slow Cooker described here, I sat a hot pot of pink beans overnight on a bean bag filled with polystyrene pearls, and wrapped it in unlined synthetic wadding used for clothing. The pink beans were great, soft enough for a toothless baby. However, the polystyrene pearls in the bean bag had slightly clotted, and the synthetic wadding at the bottom of the pot had melted into clumps. This taught me that the materials touching the pot, and especially the bottom which is hottest, should be heat-resistant. So be careful before spoiling your favourite sleeping bag in a trial! Natural materials, such as cotton or linen fabric, and hay or wool wadding work best for the inside.



3. Avoid spilling

A hot pot filled with liquid is not the easiest thing to wrap in a blanket or place in a small box without spilling. In my first trial, I spilled some liquid as I was wrestling with the heavy pot and the synthetic wadding. A wet spot will act as a heat conductor instead of insulating. Whatever design you develop for a slow cooker, try to make placing the pot in it as easy as possible, in order to avoid heat loss due to spillage.



4. The outside

The outside container of the wadding could be synthetic such as a plastic cooler, or a cardboard box lined with polystyrene plates. The outside could be rigid or soft, as long as it helps insulating.



