Tips for Using Slow Cooker Liners Without Problems
Do you love your slow cooker but hate how long it takes to clean it? It’s a common problem: you use your slow cooker to save yourself time in the kitchen, but then you end up having to soak and scrub your slow cooker for ages to get all the food stains and gunk out!
This is a pretty annoying scenario. You’re trying to save time, but all your saved time is then being spent washing dishes. Not so fun. If only crock pot cleanup could be easier, right?
Well, it can be. With slow cooker liners, you can completely eliminate the need to clean your slow cooker. Instead of spending half an hour trying to clean your crock pot, simply lift the slow cooker liner out of the crockpot, and throw it in the trash. It’s as easy as that.
Who Should Use Slow Cooker Liners?
- People who have trouble cleaning dishes – Slow cookers can be heavy so if you have a problem with your hands, it will be challenging to clean yours. The slow cooker liner makes cleanup almost effortless.
- People who hate cleaning dishes – If cleaning your crock pot is taking up a bunch of your time, using a liner will be completely worth the money for you.
- People who use their crock pot a lot – If you’re constantly cooking slow cooker meals there will inevitably be days where you just want to have an easy, stress-free meal. You don’t have to use a liner every time you cook with your crockpot, but you’ll love having them just in case.
Benefits of Using a Slow Cooker Liner
- Clean up is fast – As I said above, clean up with a slow cooker liner is as easy as removing the liner and throwing it in the trash.
- Less water waste – If you use a liner, you won’t need to soak your crock pot meaning you’re using less hot water.
Slow Cooker Liner Tips
While reading reviews of crock pot liners on the internet, there were a ton of positive ones and there were also a small number of people who had some negative things to say about them. Here are the top 3 common problems they were reporting:
- Melted liner
- Leaks
- Plastic smell
All of those sound pretty bad, so to ensure that your slow cooker liner experience is a good one, here are some tips to make your slow cooker experience a success!
Spray Your Crockpot with Cooking Spray
This is a tip to help fix the melted liner problem. Before trying this tip out, we recommend just trying a liner on its own first because this problem is pretty uncommon. If you try out the liner and it DOES melt, this tip should help fix that problem.
The solution is simple: before you put your liner into the crockpot with your food, spray the inside of the crockpot with cooking spray. We’re not sure why, but this should help stop the liners from melting.
Inspect Your Crockpot
If a ton of people are having success with these liners but they’re leaking or causing a weird smell for you, it may be the crock pots fault, not the liner. If your crock pot is a bit older, it may be heating unevenly or even overheating. Both of these problems could affect how well the liners work.
Take a look at your crock pot and try to see if you can sort out the issue. If it’s old, you may have to replace it or get it repaired.
Slow Cooker Liner Substitute
In order to keep your food safe, we don’t recommend substituting store-bought liners with DIY slow cooker liners or anything like that. Instead, we have some tips for those of you who would rather go liner-less. These tips will help your crockpot cleaning process go as smoothly as possible:
Soak Your Crock Pot Right Away
As soon as dinner is served, you should empty the leftovers from your slow cooker into a different container, and soak your slow cooker right away in the sink. Fill it with water, dish soap, and let it sit for a couple hours or overnight (depending on how dirty it is). If you let it sit out the food will dry to it and it will be a whole lot harder to get it clean.
After it’s been soaking for a while it should be easy to clean. Grab a sponge or a scrubber, put some elbow grease into it and you should be good!
Spray Your Crock Pot with Cooking Oil Beforehand
I’ve never used this tip myself before, but I’ve read that it helps stop food from crusting onto the crockpot. Simply grab some cooking spray and spray it all over the sides and bottom of your crock pot. Or, if you don’t have a spray, grab some vegetable oil, put it on a paper towel, and wipe the crockpot yourself.
This will help make the cleanup way easier! Using the soak method combined with this tip should make cleanup a breeze.
Where to Buy Crockpot Liners
You can find slow cooker liners in basically any grocery store, and there are multiple brands to choose from. Crockpot has their own brand name liners, but they can be pretty expensive.
To save some money on liners, try to find the ones made by Reynolds or PanSaver. You can find both of these brands on Amazon and they sell slow cooker liners for a really great price.
I have used the PanSaver liners quite a few times recently and they are just as good if not better than the Reynolds liners. I have had some Reynolds ones come apart at the seam before I even got it into the slow cooker. I haven’t had that issue with PanSaver so far. Love the lower price and the easy clean-up!
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Some run small, I bought a different brand (I think it was) and it was smaller then Reynolds liners.
I really like these PanSaver ones! I think they have a good fit.
Do you have to put water in the crock before the liner? We had one burn into the meat and melt into the crockpot… what a mess! Now I need a new ceramic liner for my brand new crocpot…
Oh man. That does sound like a mess! No, I do not add water before the liner. I have never had one melt! I have only used the two brands mentioned above and they have always worked great!
can you turn your crock pot on high when using liners or will they melt??
Hi. I haven’t had any problems with good quality slow cooker liners melting, so it should be fine!
Used Reynolds brand crock pot liner at Thanksgiving for green bean casserole. Everyone took one bite of green beans and pushed them aside! Ends up they tasted like burnt plastic. Liner didn’t stick to crock pot. Now for Christmas I made a roast in electric roaster and the roaster liner stuck to roaster! I’ve been using liners for years never had a problem before. Brand new crock pot and electric roaster
Oh no! I wonder if they changed their liners in some way that makes them lower quality? I’m sorry that happened to you!
Personally I would never use liners. Having to put your food in a plastic and cook for 8 hours. How can that possibly be good for you. I don’t mind cleaning my slow cooker after dinner. It is part of the process.
That makes sense, Carleen. Good points. Thank you for commenting. 🙂
I used one of the Reynolds liners for my crock pot while I was attempting to make baked beans.. needless to say I had the crockpot on for hours and it was not cooking my beans whatsoever! So about 10 hours later, I decided to cook the beans in the oven, the beans were still in the crockpot. The liner then melted all over the sides and the inside of my crockpot 🤦♀️🤦♀️ I felt and still feel silly for doing this. But my beans never turned out, and now I’m stuck with melted plastic liner all over my crockpot and not sure what else I can do to clean it!!! It’s been soaking for hours and I’ve tried almost everything. HELP!
I ordered these kitchen selection slow-cooker liners from eBay on eBay it doesn’t say I have to add water into my Crock-Pot before I put the liner in bow on the back of the box after I received it it says it on there I’m really confused I don’t understand why because I’ve seen others where you didn’t have to add water in the Crock-Pot
Interesting. I haven’t used that brand before or any that instruct to add water first. I would stick to following the instructions there so you don’t end up with a melted liner or something like that!
Any tips for getting melted liner off the heating element? I’m think I had it down to far. It didn’t smell like anything burning, but I don’t want it to at a later date. It was my first time using the slow cooker and the slow cooker liner, so I hope it didn’t ruin it.
You could use a small blade to scrape it off? And then some lemon essential oil does a great job breaking down sticky layers.
I suddenly can’t find liners to fit my small, round slow cooker. All I can find are the ones made for the oval cookers. Is there a “right” way to use the larger liners in a smaller crock? I have tried, but food invariably gets stuck in the folds, etc. Still, it saves me the headache of having my husband gripe at me for leaving something in the sink to soak overnight. Any tips are appreciated.
whenever i use a liner in my slow cooker, it rises up and a lot of liquid leaks out onto my counter. is there some way to keep the liner down?
I have the same problem, what a mess! Havent found anywhere a solution for this problem. Thinking I wont be able to use liners ever again after the third time of this happening.