Morphy Richards Sear and Stew 3.5 Litre Slow Cooker review

The Morphy Richards Sear and Stew Slow Cooker is a nifty option for most families, and the sear functions seals in heaps of flavour. We put it to the test in this Morphy Richards Sear and Stew 3.5 Litre Slow Cooker review to see how it held up when making stew and curry.

Take a look at the best slow cookers

I love nothing more than a good slow-cooked meal, but the wrong slow cooker will leave you with thin stock, bland and tough meat, and watery vegetables. The Morphy Richards Sear and Stew 3.5 Litre Slow Cooker makes enough to feed four, so it's fortunate that I enjoyed it so much, because it fed me for almost a week!

Morphy Richards Sear and Stew Slow Cooker

The Morphy Richards Sear and Stew 3.5 Litre Slow Cooker is everything you could want from a slow cooker. It's easy to use and even easier to clean, with the perfect capacity for four servings without taking up too much space.

Specs:

• Size: (H)21.0 x (W)37.5 x (D)25.5
• Bowl capacity: 3.5 litres (there is also a 6.5 litre model available)
• Heat settings: Low, Med, High
• Cleaning: Dishwasher-safe pot and lid
• Power: 163 Watts

Unboxing

The box the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew arrived in was lightweight and didn't take up too much space. It comes in two colourways: rose gold and titanium. I tried the titanium model, but it's exactly the same as the rose gold model apart from the colour.

The pot arrives in plastic packaging which needs to be removed before placing onto the base. The lid has the same packaging, and it's always worth cleaning both the pot and lid before use. Other than that though, it comes ready to use right out of the box.

Morphy Richards Sear and Stew features

You can cook with three heat modes on the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew. It can be put on either the low, medium, and high mode when cooking, but there is no keep warm setting. I found that the low mode is suitable for keeping meals warm once they're cooked.

This is a manual slow cooker, which means it won't allow you to enter a preset cooking time and then switch to keep warm once it's finished cooking. This explains the lack of a keep warm mode, but I find with slow cookers that you don't need to worry too much about specific cooking times. When it comes to slow-cooked stews and curries, an extra hour or so will simply thicken up the stock a little.

You can place the pot on the hob to sear your meat before cooking. For me, this is an essential feature in any slow cooker. I love to cook off onions, garlic, ginger, soffritto, and meats before slow cooking them, which locks in flavour and makes sure that your end dish will have a more rich flavour.

Cooking in the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew slow cooker

I made a lamb curry in the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew, so I first cooked off the leg of lamb in the pot before adding it to the base. This heated up the handles on the oval pot, so I used oven gloves to lift it up and place it in the pot.

I then added lentils, chickpeas, onions, garlic, ginger, stock, tinned tomatoes, and kale before adding the lid and turning it up to the medium mode.

The Morphy Richards Sear and Stew has decent dimensions for slow cooking a large cut of meat, but because it was a little more shallow than the length of this particular leg of lamb I had to turn it halfway through cooking to make sure it was evenly cooked.

After ten hours the lamb pulled away from the bone very easily, and I then left it for a little longer to soak up the juices from the sauce while I cooked my rice. I found that the kale was very easy to eat, in comparison to some dishes when it comes out a little tough and chewy, and the lentils and chickpeas were very tender.

The sauce was the perfect consistency, not to watery but also not too thick, and it tasted great, too.

The cooking process was pretty easy, but I noted that the handles of the non-stick pot were hot to touch while cooking. Thankfully the slow cooker itself has handles which did warm up, but never became too hot that I couldn't touch them. The exterior of the slow cooker also became warm but not too hot to touch, just be careful if you've got pets or children who may be able to reach the slow cooker.

Cleaning the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew

This part is super easy. Simply place the pot on the top shelf of the dishwasher, along with the lid, and it will come out ready to use once more.

It's also easy to clean by hand though, because the pot has a very sturdy non-stick coating that allows sauce and stuck-on lentils to glide off.

Should you buy the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew?

The Morphy Richards Sear and Stew is not the cheapest manual slow cooker you can buy, but it's a good price for the quality and design. If you like to batch cook but don't want to store anything too large or bulky in your cupboards, it's a great choice.

I like the look of this slow cooker too. The titanium model is nice, and the rose gold option is a jazzy look for those who have kettles and toasters to match. If you spend a lot of time out of the house you may be better choosing a digital slow cooker which will allow you to set delay timers and switch automatically to a keep-warm setting. However, a manual slow cooker will cost a lot less and still deliver great results.

About this review, and the reviewer

Millie Fender heads up all things small appliances at Ideal Home. There’s nothing she loves more than testing out the latest and greatest cooking gadgets, for indoor and outdoor use, from toasters to air fryers. She reviewed the Morphy Richards Sear and Stew from her own kitchen, testing it for quality cooking and ease of use.

Millie lives in South London and is constantly squeezing more appliances into her modest kitchen. If it makes it onto the kitchen counters full time, you know an appliance is worth the hype.