If you watch This Is Us, you’ve most likely bawled your eyes out as the beloved Pearson family house burned down in a fire caused by a Crock-Pot, which ultimately killed everybody’s favorite dad, Jack Pearson. After wiping away their last tears, viewers who remembered that they had a slow cooker in their house froze. Some of you even immediately threw it out in fear of a similar tragedy happening in your house. But, was that really necessary?
Almost immediately after the episode aired, the Crock-Pot brand opened a Twitter account for their slow-cookers. The first tweet mourned the events in the episode 
before clarifying that there was no need to worry about having a slow cooker in the house. They even added that they hadn’t received consumer complaints similar to the events in the episode in nearly fifty years.
Does this mean Crock-Pots aren’t dangerous at all? Not exactly, but it’s not likely that the danger will present itself from a random fuse. In a report on slow-cooker accidents between 1997-2010, most of the incidents occurred from a mishandling of the equipment — i.e., people kept dropping hot food on themselves. So, what happened in the Pearson home is a highly unlikely situation, even if it brought us to buy even more boxes of tissues to wipe away tears during our weekly sobfest.
And, honestly, do you really want to give up that Crock-Pot? You can make some seriously yummy things in a slow cooker. Chicken and vegetables, garlic shrimp, mac and cheese and pinto beans for the vegetarians–there are a variety of meals you can cook up for lunch or dinner (or even breakfast, honestly). But what about dessert, you ask? Well, there’s even a recipe for making the Latin American dessert 
dulce de leche. If you haven’t tried it, you’re seriously missing out and should pretty much drop whatever you’re doing and make some in your Crock-Pot — provided that you haven’t chucked it out the window yet.
Still, delicious food aside, it’s easy to be scared after experiencing the Pearsons’ tragedy (through the screen, I mean). Luckily, the USDA has safety precautions to make you feel better about the Crock-Pot in your house. Since I know what part you’re all worried about, I’ll only mention one: the USDA actually deems it safe to leave a Crock-Pot on a low setting when you leave the house. So, the chances of your Crock-Pot that’s turned off to suddenly blow up…well, I think it’s safe to say that This Is Not Likely.
Text by Anna Khan