Rillettes are a delicious and chunky meat spread, also known as potted meat. They’re generally made in a pot on the stove, in the oven or in a large, cast iron cauldron. But rillettes can also be made in more modern appliances like the slow cooker and Instant Pot. Why would you do that? Keep reading for 7 reasons to give rillettes a try in your slow cooker or Instant Pot!
This article covers:
- What are rillettes?
- What’s the difference between a slow cooker and an Instant Pot?
- 7 reasons to make rillettes in a slow cooker or Instant Pot.
- Save energy (and dollars)
- Free up your oven for other dishes
- Cook while you sleep or work
- Maintain marital bliss in the summer
- Teach your kids to cook the French way
- Use your favourite recipe with no tricky substitutions
- Take a hands-off approach compared to the stove top or traditional Loire method
- Slow cooker success tips for making rillettes.
- Recipe suggestions for making rillettes in your slow cooker or Instant Pot.
Now that you know what this article covers, let’s get into all the details of each topic.
What are rillettes?
Rillettes are a shredded meat spread, generally made with pork or a mix of pork and another meat. Unlike a smooth pâté, rillettes have a chunky texture. They’re a French charcuterie speciality. In English, we call them by their French name, as we do with many French culinary terms. However, you can also call them potted meat.
Rillettes are pronounced ree-ette or ree-yette. [I learned this the hard way at the butcher shop when I said, “I’m making rill-ettes and I’m looking for…” The meat hawker was rather gracious about correcting my anglicized pronunciation.]
Standard ingredients for rillettes:
- Pork and another meat such as duck, rabbit, chicken, game or veal.
- Fat such as fatback, pork belly, duck fat and/or lard.
- Salt, spices and aromatics.
- Stock, wine and/or water.
Fish rillettes can be made with salmon, trout or sardines. There are even vegetarian options for a rillettes-like dish; I’ve seen vegan rillettes recipes made with tofu, jack fruit, mushrooms, etc. However, these fish and vegetarian/vegan rillettes recipes don’t follow the same slow cooking process as traditional pork rillettes.
Basic instructions for making rillettes:
- Dump all the ingredients in a pot.
- Simmer for hours, either on the stove or in the oven.
- Shred the meat and fat with a fork and wooden spoon or the paddle attachment on your stand mixer.
- Put into small jars or pots.
- Cover the rillettes with a layer of pork fat.
Rillettes really are easy to make, which is one of the things I really appreciate about them!
What’s the difference between a slow cooker and an Instant Pot?
About slow cookers
A slow cooker is an electrical, countertop appliance made of a metal outer compartment and an inner cooking vessel, made of glazed ceramic or porcelain. The heating coil is in the metal housing unit. The lid is usually glass. Old-school slow cookers generally have three settings: low, high and off. As slow cookers modernized, their functions grew to include a keep warm setting, timers for turning them on and off, automatic shut off, clips to hold the lid in place more securely, temperature probes and more. Some slow cookers have become multi-cookers that allow you to slow cook, sauté and steam food, all in the one device.
Of course, you can still get a basic slow cooker with the three basic settings (low, high, off). And remember, less electronics, less things to go wrong.
Slow cookers are also called Crockpots, which is a brand of slow cooker.
[These days some slow cookers are “WiFi enabled” which puts a weak link into your home security system. For a quick overview on security issues associated with connected home appliances, check out Cathy Cunningham’s article on The Philadelphia Inquirer, Just how secure are those Internet-enabled home appliances and devices?]
About the Instant Pot
The Instant Pot is a brand name multi-cooker. Like a slow cooker, it sits on your countertop and runs on electricity. Unlike a slow cooker, the inner pot is made of stainless steel and the outer housing and lid is metal and plastic; the lid connects securely to the Instant Pot and you can’t peek through it to see how your Beef Bourguignon is coming along.
As for the multi-cooker aspect, Instant Pots were introduced with six functions but there are now models that come with 10 functions.
Available Instant Pot functions include:
- Pressure cooker.
- Slow cooker.
- Rice/porridge cooker.
- Sauté/searing.
- Steamer.
- Warmer.
- Yogurt maker.
- Cake maker.
- Egg cooker.
- Sterilizer.
As you probably guessed, the Instant Pot has far more electronic options than a basic slow cooker. There’s a button for each function which automatically sets the time and temperature for you. Or you can set things up manually with delayed start, cooking duration and temperature (low or high).
I’ve had both a slow cooker and an Instant Pot and the things I appreciated about the Instant Pot are the stainless-steel cooking vessel and the pressure cooker feature. However, that was back when I ate beans; I didn’t like pressure-cooked meat as much as slow cooked meat. Plus, it started acting weirdly at the end, where it seemed to heat up too quickly, even on the low slow-cooker setting. Alas, I gave it away. If I were to buy another slow cooker or Instant Pot, I’d probably go for the simple low-high-off slow cooker as my needs are simple and there are fewer things that can go wrong.
Now onto why it’s a good idea to cook rillettes in your slow cooker or Instant Pot. Remember that if you’re using your Instant Pot, we’re talking about cooking rillettes using the slow cook function (though I do link to a pressure cooker rillettes recipe in the section at the end).
Reason #1 to make rillettes in a slow cooker or Instant Pot: Save energy (and dollars)
Slow cookers and Instant Pots use far less energy than turning on the oven, which is the most common way to make rillettes.
Even if you’re not pinching pennies or living off grid, it’s still nice to save energy because energy savings translates into dollar savings.
It seems that even though you cook for longer in a slow cooker, they still use less energy than cooking in an oven.
Canstar Blue, an Australian consumer review and comparison website, says in their article, The real cost of cooking your dinner, “Electric ovens are known as ‘heavy-draw’ appliances, which means they use quite a lot of power. An average 600mm built-in oven has between a 2kW and 8kW capacity … A one-hour cooking time can cost up to and over $2 for more powerful ovens (on the basis of an electricity rate of 33c per kWh).”
Cooking is costly down under. Less so in North America.
Direct Energy, an energy company with 4 million customers, says in their article, How Much Energy Does an Electric Oven and Stove Use?, “Most electric ovens draw between 2,000 and 5,000 watts, with the average electric stove wattage coming in at around 3,000 watts. So how much energy does an electric stove use per hour? Assuming an electricity rate of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), a 3000-watt oven will cost you about 36 cents per hour at high heat.”
With this same cost per kWh, they estimate that using a stove burner (that pulls 1,200 to 3,000 watts, depending on size) costs $0.14 to $0.36 per hour.
Gas ovens tend to run cheaper because gas is cheaper than electricity.
On the other hand, slow cookers and Instant Pots are not heavy draw appliances.
Npower, a UK energy company, says in their article Ever wondered how much your appliances cost to run?, “The average 3.5 litre slow cooker uses about 1.3 kWh of electricity or 21p to power eight hours of cooking – that’s less that 1p per hour.” This cost estimate is based on “16p per kWh which means 1000 watts or one kilowatt (1 kW) of power expended for one hour (1 h) of time.”
Constellation Energy Resources, an American energy company, says in their article, Instant Pot® vs. Crock-Pot®: Which is More Energy Efficient?, “The smallest 1.5-quart Crock-Pot is rated at 120 watts, while the most popular 8-quart model is rated at 320 watts.”
Pressure Cooking Today, a blog that specializes in pressure cooking foods, says in their article, How To Use An Instant Pot In Your RV, “Most 6-quart Instant Pots are around 1000 watts, while the 3 quarts average about 700 watts and the 8 quarts average 1200 watts.”
Rillettes energy consumption comparison: Oven, stove, slow cooker, pressure cooker
| Oven | Stove | Slow cooker | Instant Pot | |
| kW/Watts drawn per hour | 2 kW – 8 kW (2,000 – 8,000 watts) | 1.2 kW – 3 kW (1,200 – 3,000 watts) | .12 kW – .32 kW (120 watts – 320 watts) | .7 kW – 1.2 kW (700 – 1200 watts) |
| Time to cook rillettes | 2 – 6 hours. | 2 – 3 hours | 6 – 8 hours | 75 minutes (pressure cooker) 6 – 8 hours (slow cooker) |
| kW/Watts drawn per batch of rillettes: shortest cooking time | 4 kW – 16 kW (4,000 – 16,000 watts) | 2.4 kW – 6 kW (2,400 – 6,000 watts) | .72 kW – 1.92 kW (720 watts – 1,920 watts) | Pressure cooker: .875 kW – 1.5 kW (875 – 1,500 watts) Slow cooker: 4.2 kW – 7.2 kW (420 – 7,200 watts) |
| kW/Watts drawn per batch of rillettes: longest cooking time | 12 kW – 48 kW (12,000 – 48,000 watts) | 3.6 kW – 9 kW (3,600 – 9,000 watts) | .96 kW – 2.56 kW (960 watts – 2,560 watts) | 5.6 kW – 9.6 kW (5,600 – 9,600 watts) |
Wattage numbers in this chart are based on the articles referenced earlier in this section.
So, there you go. No matter what your electricity costs, the slow cooker is your cheapest option for making rillettes.
Reason #2 to make rillettes in a slow cooker or Instant Pot: Free up your oven for other dishes
As mentioned in the chart above, it takes between two and six hours to cook rillettes in the oven. In my experience, it’s in the middle of that range, at about four hours. That’s a lot of time to monopolize the oven.
If you’ve got a big family that you’re always cooking for, you might not want to use the oven to cook rillettes for hours if you’ve got other foods to make for dinner.
This is especially true during the holidays. Imagine someone says they need the oven for four hours to make rillettes on Christmas day. You’d think they were crazy!
Using your slow cooker or Instant Pot to make rillettes means you can keep your oven free for other dishes like cookie sheet bacon, broccoli bake casserole and an entire turkey.
Reason #3 to make rillettes in a slow cooker or Instant Pot: Cook while you sleep or work
Slow cookers and Instant Pots are truly set-and-forget cooking. You can dump your ingredients into the slow cooker or Instant Pot and leave it for hours. If it’s night, go to bed and wake up to the delicious smell of cooked pork. If it’s day, go to work and come home knowing you don’t have to slave away to make dinner from scratch.
Of course, this benefit works for making rillettes and any other food you can slow cook on low (in the range of eight hours or so).
While you wouldn’t leave your oven or waffle maker on unattended, it’s safe to leave your slow cooker on even if you’re not around.
In their article, Is It Safe to Leave The Crock-Pot On All Day?, Bustle suggests taking four safety precautions for using the slow cooker. You must put the slow cooker on a stable, heat-proof surface (such as your counter, duh), make sure the lid is on the slow cooker, use the right amount of liquid (like Goldilocks, not too much, not too little) and only use the low setting for all day use.
If you follow the operating instructions for your slow cooker, you should be fine as slow cookers are very safe.
However, the TV show This Is Us caused escalating worry about slow cooker safety because [SPOILER ALERT!] some guy named Jack dies after the switch on his slow cooker malfunctions, somehow causes a spark—which lands on a dish towel—and the whole place goes up in flames.
It’s very unlikely that this will happen to you. However, if you have an old slow cooker that has one of those fabric-covered electrical cords, don’t leave it unattended.
Slow-cooking expert, Stephanie O’Dea, takes a firmer approach than this. In their article, ‘Tis the Season for Crock-Pots, But First Make Sure Yours is Safe, NBC News reported Stephanie as saying, “If your slow cooker is old enough to have an electric cord surrounded by fabric, it’s time to toss it. Fabric cords do not meet today’s safety standards and are a fire hazard.”
Reason #4 to make rillettes in a slow cooker or Instant Pot: Maintain marital bliss in the summer
This reason mostly applies to folks who don’t have air conditioning, like me. Not only do I lack air conditioning (and am perfectly fine with this, thank you very much) but we live in a long, skinny apartment so all the windows face west, and that afternoon sun is killer. Summer gets hot and sticky in downtown Toronto and even with a robust fan schedule, the heat can be oppressive at times.
So, every year, there comes a day when it gets too much, and my husband bans me from using the oven for the rest of the summer. He’s a pretty easy-going guy but these bans are generally a direct result of me cranking the oven in the summertime. Every year, until that time, I think, “Well, he hasn’t said anything so it’s probably okay and it’s not thaaaaaat hot,” and then I turn on the oven. Then the ban, then I respect the ban until that summer is over.
This past summer, I learned that it’s not just my husband who thinks ovens are inappropriate kitchen tools for some part of the year.
I used the oven in my air-conditioner-free apartment to cook something—for like an hour, not five hours!—and I mentioned it to my also-air-conditioner-free neighbour. She said, “I would divorce you for that.” Ha!
So, as all this might lead you to guess, I had a rillettes-free summer because I don’t have a slow cooker or Instant Pot anymore.
But if you have anti-oven house rules like Chez Andrea does, and you have a slow cooker, you can eat your rillettes and keep the peace in your marriage.
And as you saw from the energy use chart in a previous section, running your slow cooker is super cheap—and way cheaper than couples counselling.
So, keep the marital bliss on overdrive with summertime rillettes that don’t cause your loved one(s) to get heat stroke in their own home.
Reason #5 to make rillettes in a slow cooker or Instant Pot: Teach your kids to cook the French way
I recently read in a French cookbook written by an American woman living in France that kids in France are treated as small adults and thus know how to use knives, forks and table manners. [I’m sorry, I can’t remember what the book was called.]
Plus, I know from my nieces and goddaughter (and her siblings) that kids like to cook, especially as a fun kid-adult activity.
Rillettes, whether you make them in the oven or the slow cooker, are perfect for cooking with kids.
They’re easy to make.
There are lots of kid-friendly activities throughout the recipe, including studding the onion with cloves (so look for one of those recipes), measuring the spices and aromatics, mixing up the cooked product and pouring the melted fat over the finished rillettes.
Depending on the age of the kid(s), there’s really no step they shouldn’t do except maybe take the dish out of the oven. But since we’re talking about slow cooker rillettes, that step doesn’t apply.
You may be wondering if this French country food may be too sophisticated for the non-French kid(s) in your life. Well, I can’t say.
But Quinn, a first-generation homesteader, has experience with this. In her article (and recipe), How to Preserve Crockpot Pork Rillettes in Lard, she says about her homemade rillettes, “I’ve got a 5-year old in here right now with a box of crackers on her head asking me if she can have one with some of “that stuff” on it. Now you know 5-year-olds never lie. About what food they like, that is.”
Reason #6 to make rillettes in a slow cooker or Instant Pot: Use your favourite recipe with no tricky substitutions
Translating recipes from the oven to the slow cooker—or especially the pressure cooker—can be tricky. So tricky that it’s probably better to find another recipe if you don’t like this kind of experimentation.
But because rillettes are so simple in ingredients and cooking method, you don’t have to do that.
You can basically use your favourite rillettes recipe (that’s usually cooked in the oven) and use it for the slow cooker. Just like with the oven method, you need to make sure your ingredients fit snugly in the slow cooker. The first time you test this out, you may have to add a bit more liquid so keep a look out for that. But I’m guessing not because there seems to be about the same amount of liquid called for in rillettes recipes, whether they’re for the slow cooker or oven (it’s not that much, less than two cups).
As for the pressure cooker, there’s a quick solution. In his recipe, Rillette of Duck – Duck Rillette – Rillette de Canard, Max Rasmussen gives his cooking instructions for using a whole duck to make rillettes and finishes that instruction with, “Or one hour in the pressure cooker.”
Recipes for pressure cooked rillettes are scant, as far as my research today went, but this hour timeline is aligned to another recipe I found (which I link to in the recipe section below).
Reason #7 to make rillettes in a slow cooker or Instant Pot: Take a hands-off approach compared to the stove top or traditional Loire valley method
As I mentioned earlier, you can make rillettes on the stove top as well as in the oven, slow cooker or Instant Pot.
I don’t use the stove top method as it’s more difficult to keep the ingredients at a low simmer for hours at a time on the stove. You have to fuss over it a little bit. It’s a more hands-on approach. I don’t like fussing and laying my hands on the cooking vessel when there’s a no-fuss, hands off method (or three as we get with the slow cooker, the Instant Pot and the oven).
Depending on your recipe, the stove top version of rillettes can be quick. In their book, Pâté, Confit, Rillette: Recipes from the Craft of Charcuterie, Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman have a recipe for rabbit rillettes that takes two to three hours on the stove top. This is faster than many oven recipes by at least an hour.
But not all stove top recipes are fast. If you go to the Loire Valley of France, things get considerably slower when it comes to the artisanal delicacy called rillettes de Tours.
Tours is a city in western France, famous for rillettes. In The Guardian article, What’s better than a rich French paté?, they report, “In 2013, producers of Rillettes de Tours secured EU protected geographical indication status for their product. Producers further north have been trying to obtain the same protection for Rillettes du Mans for 20 years.”
This status means that only artisanal producers from the Indre-et-Loire area (historically called Touraine) can call their product rillettes de Tours. This is a guarantee of rillettes authenticity.
Rillettes de Tours are not just like any old rillettes made in Cleveland (Ohio), Shitterton (England) or Kapuskasing (Ontario).
They’re special and they take a long time.
According to the Rillettes de Tours section in the French version of Wikipedia, rillettes de Tours have a golden colour, are cooked for between five and 12 hours in an uncovered cast iron pan and are traditionally made with Vouvray. Vouvray is white wine made from chenin blanc grapes from the Loire Valley, outside of Tours.
Most other rillettes are cooked in a covered pot.
With an uncovered pot over the heat source, there’s a lot more hands on time to make sure the temperature remains stable. That Wikipedia entry didn’t mention stirring but I imagine regular stirring is required to keep the meat from sticking and to check the moisture level.
Cooking your rillettes in the slow cooker (or Instant Pot) saves you hassle compared to the regular stovetop method and hassle and time compared to the traditional rillettes de Tours method.
[Plus, think of all the time it takes to move to the Loire Valley and become a registered artisanal rillette producer before you can even start to make real rillettes de Tours. Staying home and using the slow cooker instead is a real time saver!]
Slow cooker success tips for making rillettes
Besides the safety tips I mentioned above (the ones that make it a-okay to leave your slow cooker on overnight or while you’re away for the day), there are only a few basic tips you’ll need to be successful making rillettes in the slow cooker or Instant Pot.
Slow cooker success tips for making rillettes:
- Follow the recipe. The first time anyway. Rillettes are a forgiving dish, so you don’t have to worry too much. Unless you get the next tip wrong…
- Choose the right sized slow cooker or Instant Pot. Everything should fit snugly in your cooking vessel when you make rillettes. If you use a slow cooker that’s too big, the liquid and fat won’t cover all the meat and it will dry out and then you’ll wreck it and be very sad.
- Exercise patience if your rillettes seem too salty as soon as they’re finished cooking. Don’t dump the slow cooker contents into the green bin in a fit of despair; wait! Rillettes are over salted during the cooking process because they’re served cold or at room temperature. Our taste buds can’t recognize the salt flavour as well with cold and room temperature foods as with hot foods.
Recipe suggestions for making rillettes in your slow cooker or Instant Pot
I’ve put together a couple rillettes recipes designed especially for the slow cooker and Instant Pot (using the pressure cooker setting). Try your favourite rillettes recipe or go for one of these!
Recipe suggestion for slow cooker rillettes: How to Preserve Crockpot Pork Rillettes in Lard by Quinn, a first-generation homesteader, on her Reformation Acres website.
Recipe suggestion for slow cooker rillettes: The easiest way to make rillettes is in your slow cooker by Stacey Ballis on The Takeout website.
Recipe suggestion for pressure cooked rillettes in your Instant Pot: How I used the pressure cooker to make pork rillettes in under 2 hours. This recipe gets bonus points for being one of the few pressure-cooked rillettes recipes I could find!
Conclusion
Well, that’s all there is to the benefits of cooking your rillettes in your slow cooker or Instant Pot. I hope you’ll incorporate this cooking method into your rillettes repertoire. May all your low-and-slow rillettes melt in your mouth and nourish your mind, body and soul!
