Most of us know that cooking our own food at home is a great way to save money and stay healthy. After all, you get to decide what goes into your meals and whether or not youll be using bad ingredients at your own risk. That said, very few actually want to go through the hassle and tiring work of preparing, cooking, and waiting for the food to be done. Smart cooking appliances only take care of the middle part, but they come with their own inconvenient trade-offs.Slow cookers have become rather popular because of our modern, fast-paced lifestyles, ironic as it may sound. It allows for a more leisurely way of preparing food that will be warm and ready by the time you get back home from work. This concept design goes beyond just providing functionality, however, and offers a unique experience thats inspired by a culture and a method that goes back ages.Designer: Julian KoebbeSlow cookers might be a modern appliance, but the concept is hardly novel. The people of Hawaii, for example, had a tradition of literally burying and covering large quantities of food in a pit for cooking. Although it created a unique communal atmosphere as it prepared for and fed a large number of people, it naturally didnt scale to modern lifestyles and small families or single-person households.There are, however, some lessons that can be gleaned from this method, which is what the Lehua slow cooker concept is trying to propose. Inspired by Hawaiian Imu underground oven pits, this slow cooker design adds a few peculiar features that make the process a little more convenient and, in some ways, meaningful. For example, the actual pot is a separate component from the cooker itself, allowing you to safely lift the hot pot away and use it to prepare the food.The heat retention bag is also designed a bit differently and is meant to hold things like wood shavings, dirt, sand, or spices. Odd as those materials might sound, they give a unique fragrance and even earthy flavors to the dish, mimicking the effects of burying food in the ground while it cooks. Of course, the bag also acts as a filter to prevent unhygienic materials from seeping into the food itself.While it does take a few pages out of traditional manual cooking methods, the Lehua slow cooker definitely displays a modern aesthetic. With soft pastel colors and geometric shapes, it adds a natural touch to your kitchen. It also uses modern technologies such as induction cooking to really make the process even more efficient, ensuring that you will always have a warm meal ready after a tiring day at work.The post Slow cooker concept takes inspiration from Hawaiian underground pit cooking first appeared on Yanko Design.