Electric Cookware Reviews

I've owned Rival brand crock pots since they've been on the market and wanted to replace my old one with this newer chrome model. From the very start I had problems with the water perking out of the lid and creating a mess on my kitchen countertop and floor. I tried placing a glass bowl upside down on the lid to hold it down but still had problems. The temperature seems way too hot for a low setting. Often my meal has completely dried out and burned. I usually put a meal on in the morning to have ready for dinner in the evening, but now cooking with this crockpot is a fire hazard. I've gone back to my old crock pot and plan to write the manufacturer. I wish I had read these reviews before I bought!

Had the water problem as stated by other consumers. Water
puddle in front of slow cooker and on the floor. Slip and fall
danger. Not a small puddle at all.
ALSO MAJOR temp problem. On LOW, my meat cooked in about half the time. 6 hours (3.5 lb. pot roast) recipe was for 10-12 hours. The warm feature was set by the manufacturer,still continued to cook my meal. Dangerous situation to say the least.
The Hot temp on low and the water spewing everywhere happened with 2 different Rival pots. returned both.,

This Rival crock pot is my third or fourth crock pot. All of its predecessors eventually stopped working. However, none of them experienced the problem I discovered when I first used this model: The lid is too light to keep water from building up around the edge of the pot. Eventually the lid begins to float on a layer of hot water around the edge of the pot. I had to keep mopping the water away from the rim of the crock pot in order to keep it from overflowing onto the counter--and that water was hot, as it was condensing from steam. I was using the low setting, so I'm not exactly dying to find out how fast the water builds up when I set it to 'high.'

The next time I use this pot, I'll try setting some kind of weight on the lid. If you purchase this model, beware of hot water leakage, and adjust for the fact that whatever you are cooking in the pot is going to be a little drier than you might have expected because of the escaping water.

Slow cookers are great. This one isn't. Here's why:

-- Instead of a heatproof handle, like every other crock pot I've ever seen, this handle is metal and gets hot.

-- Lid doesn't fit snuggly, so food dries out and extra liquid is necessary. It also spatters on the counter, and can be messy.

-- The smart function is stupid -- you can't independently set the cook times and the reduced heat. It cooks on low for 8 to 10 hours or high for 4 or 6. Lot's of recipes have different times, and they can't be properly set in this pot. It's practically useless.

-- You can't set the "warm" function independently of the cooking functions. For example, if you were cooking in the kitchen and wanted to serve in the dining room, you couldn't move the pot to the dining room and set it to warm. The pot only does "warm" after it's gone through the whole cooking cycle.

Conclusion: Don't buy this slow cooker. Buy a different one.

Between my mom and I, we have tried 3 different Rival 38601 6-Quart Smart Pot Slow Cooker, Chrome models. All of them have cooked much hotter than our old crock pots. When I cook in this one, I don't start cooking until afternoon so that our dinner won't be overcooked. Everything always burns in the back and on the bottom. The front of the crock pot cooks better. I'll be returning this one and getting a totally different crock pot. Both my mom and I are very dissappointed in this particular model. I've refered to the manual and followed directions, and it still is not they're best model. I've tested it with boiling water. I can boil water just about as fast in the crock pot as I can on my gas stove! Not much of a SLOW cooker. I use the crock pot 2 times a week. So I am an experienced crock pot user.

I admit I was hesitant to buy this with all the negative reviews posted here, but after researching it, I did buy it and I'm glad I did.

I love coming home from work to the smell of something cooking. I now have three crockpots and they are used quite a bit. The programmable features work well for me. If something needs to only cook for 8 hours, and I won't be home for 10 hours, no problem, it goes directly to "warm" mode.

The other nice feature is the lid and removable crock go either directly to the dishwasher or if I'm really in a hurry, I can put the unused portion into the refrigerator in the crock that it cooked in.

For those others who have spoken of meat burning in the crockpot - duh! read the directions! Unlike other brands, the Rival crockpots are heated both from the bottom and around the sides. Therefore, you need to have meat or liquids touching the sides as well as the bottom.

It is true the outside of the crockpot gets VERY hot. That is of no concern to me. There are handles to lift it with a potholder. There really is no need for your hands to come in contact with it when it is that hot!

I really like this product and I think you will too.

I arrived home after my crock pot was on for 8 hours and witnessed the wrath of this crockpot! My hot sausage and spaghetti sauce was reduced to five pieces of sausage and black sludge! I was devastated and was sure this is a defect, but after reading these reviews, it's par for the course.

This is a horrible crock-pot. The first one I owned went back to the store for an exchange. I thought there was something wrong with it. Everything I cooked turned into a horrible, burned mess!! I exchanged it for the same one. Same problem. It cooks WAY TOO HOT!! This one is going back too. I think I'll have to find another brand.

It is so frustrating to come home thinking you're going to have a nice hot meal and instead find a shrunken up, burned meal. Or, my chili at a rolling boil on the "warm" cycle. My other crock-pot is a Rival and it's fine. This is frustrating!

I really like the controls on the Rival 38501 crock pot. They are easy to read and easy to use with one push of a button. The clean up was also very easy and user friendly. Another good quality of the Rival 5QT crock pot is the appearance. I had many compliments when we had guests over of how nice it looked.The downsides of this product are the safety issues. While we cooked in the crock pot for the day, I noticed that the longer the pot would stew, the handle on the lid would heat up. This made it very difficult to open up the lid while trying to serve. The clear lid is wonderful to see how your food is doing, but I think the handle needs to have a safer substance. Maybe a full plastic handle instead of the hard metal or steel (I am not sure what it is made of).
Overall the crock pot is very nice I just have to be careful with my children, guests, and myself when serving anything in it.

I have to agree with the first review. We actually made a fondue first and it worked so well that I could not wait to try a stir fry... What a disappointment: it does not eat enough and the food steams slowly, very slowly...

I was given one of these for Christmas. I thought, great! I can now use a wok that will actually be hot enough to cook in (I have an electric stove, not a gas one). But boy, was I wrong. This thing does not have the heat to make anything more than about 1 serving. Want to make fried rice? Go ahead and do it in a frying pan on the stove. That will be twice as hot.

The fondue pot works well however. But get serious. How often will you actually use a fondue pot? Although, now that I'm thinking about it, I might make some chocolate fondue tonight....

My husband and I use our wok a few times a month for stirfry. It heats up just great for us and makes enough for two AND enough leftovers for both of us to take to work for lunch the next day. We have had a great time experimenting with recipes - this is a great purchase. The fondue pot works great as well.

I bought this range and some pans a few months ago to augment my microwave and was quite disapponted with its performance. I only used it twice, and it burnt the food both times. Be warned - this thing is a waste of money, even if it is only $25. Specific complaints are as follows:

1.) Before the first use, you have to turn it to the highest setting for about 15 minutes to "cure" the metal of the burners. This involves burning off whatever plastic residue is left on them from the factory, and it produces a noxious, smoky fume that not only set off my smoke detector, but made me want to vomit as well.

2.) The knobs to adjust the burners are a joke. The settings are 1, 2, 3, 4, and FULL, but I couldn't distinguish any difference in the level of heat anywhere from 1 to 3. It took about 40 minutes to boil 3 quarts of cool water at the FULL setting, and another 15 or so to achieve a "full-rolling" boil.

3. Worse yet, the burners are only about 5" in diamater, which focuses all the heat in a very small spot at the bottom of your pan, virtually guaranteeing burnt food unless you stir constantly. Only high-quality cookware like Calphalon could do a really good job of diffusing the heat, and let's face it - if you can afford nice cookware like that (and have the space to store it), I doubt you have much need for a product like this in the first place.

For anyone who lives in a dorm, barracks, etc. these types of hot-plates are usually banned anyway (as they are often viewed as a fire hazard), so as an alternative I would recommend buying some high quality glass/ceramic bowls or dishes you could use to cook things in the microwave. Just be sure to get some oven mitts too!

After waiting for more than three weeks, I got this skillet. But soon I found that the glass cover doesn't match the skillet. Looking carefully, I found skillet is not square, but has big distortion.

This product is a Class Action Lawsuit wanna-be --- read up on how to treat burn injuries!

I own this fry pan. I am looking for a new one. This one is hard to use. The glass top has glass handles on the sides of the lid. When the pan is hot the lid and handles are very hot. You have to use pot holders on each side of the lid to lift it off. Steam escapes as you lift it off, and you rarely escape getting burned. I would give it no stars if that was an option.

The skillet itself is fine, the nonstick does a good job and clean up is easy. The glass cover, however, is a serious oversight in design. Though its a novel idea, being able to serve or microwave/conventional oven heat in the cover, there is simply no way to safely lift the cover from the skillet. The manufacturer should have designed a knob on the top of the cover rather than the two narrow and burning hot "lips" that barely protrude from the sides. There are safer choices!

We puchased three of them. The first two "burned out" after about 45 min. the first time they were used. The other one did the same the second time used. Would certainly not recommend it.

I was looking for an electric skillet that could accomidate 2 cut-up frying chickins and easy to clean. Well, this skillet is a little to delicate for my liking. It fries up that much chicken or 4 halibut steaks just fine, but I accidently made a hairline scratch on the coated cooking surface and it was never the same. With each use and washing that scratch got wider and longer until small patches of the coating began coming off and exposeing the bare metal beneath, and of course any food coming into contact with that would stick. The disintegration of the surface continued no matter how carefully I washed it until I just threw it away. I should add that the electric cord is only about 2 feet in lenght! So you must cook right next to an outlet. I prefer a hardier piece of equipment not something I have to pamper.

I was so disappointed in the Rival Mug Warmer. I ordered several and all but one are sitting at the very back in the bottom of my cupboard.
The coffee doesn't stay very warm never mind hot.
Several years ago I purchased Dazey Mug Warmers. I still have three and if I have a lid on my coffee, it will keep it hot.
I have been looking for something similar, so far without success.