January is National Slow Cooker Month and also National Soup Month. When these two items come together some delicious things result. They complement each other like Cinderella and the Prince.
Soup is the old partner in this relationship. Archaeological evidence showed that the first bowl of soup was cooked in 20,000 BC. It became part of the everyday menu by 6000 BC. After the invention of clay pots and bowls, making soup was easy.
By the late 18th century, you could tell a lot about the local flavor of an area by just tasting its soup. The 19th century brought soup in a can. The 20th century paired soup-making with slow-cooking.
Many cultures have used low temperature cooking for a long time. The slow cooker we use today was invented in the 1930s by Irving Nachumsohn. By the 1940s the cooker had become very popular. It was marketed to working mothers who could put food in the pot before leaving for work and come home to a cooked meal. In 1970 the inventor sold his patent to Rival Manu...