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When someone who teaches traditional cooking for a living tells you she uses her VitaClay “practically every day,” you pay attention.
Wardee Harmon, founder and lead teacher of Traditional Cooking School, has spent years helping families bring traditional food preparation back into everyday life—from sourdough and cultured foods to soaked grains, beans, broth, soups and home-cooked meals.
She's also a longtime VitaClay user.
In her updated review, Wardee compares VitaClay cookers, discusses how they fit alongside pressure cookers and slow cookers, and shares her experience with the newest member of the VitaClay family: the Nourishing Pot.
Her conclusion?
“The Clear Winner: The Nourishing Pot.”
Why does someone so committed to traditional cooking reach for an electric clay cooker so often?
That's where the story gets interesting.
Wardee is an author, educator and longtime advocate for preparing food using traditional methods.
Her work at Traditional Cooking School grew around the idea of teaching families how to make real-food preparation practical at home. Her educational work covers areas such as sourdough, fermentation, traditional grains and everyday cooking.
That's one reason her relationship with VitaClay means so much to us.
VitaClay was founded around a remarkably similar question:
Wardee approaches that question as a traditional-food educator.
VitaClay founder Michelle Liu approached it as an engineer.
Different paths.
Very similar destination.
That's one of the most powerful things Wardee says in her updated review.
Not:
I tested this appliance.
Not:
I made one recipe.
She describes VitaClay as part of her everyday kitchen.
Wardee says she soaks grains and beans before cooking them and uses VitaClay for foods including grains, soups and broth. She says she uses it as often as her Instant Pot—and sometimes more.
For us, that's what a meaningful product review looks like.
Not simply whether something photographs beautifully on the counter.
Does it become part of the way you actually cook?
See how Wardee uses VitaClay in her own traditional-food kitchen and why the Nourishing Pot became her favorite VitaClay model.
“The Clear Winner: The Nourishing Pot.”
— Wardee Harmon, Traditional Cooking School
Wardee describes VitaClay as occupying an interesting space between conventional slow cooking and pressure cooking.
She appreciates the hands-free nature of the cooker, its clay cooking vessel, its ability to make moist foods, and its versatility for foods such as soaked grains and beans, soups, stews, broth, porridges, yogurt and steamed vegetables.
That distinction matters.
A slow cooker emphasizes long, unattended cooking.
A pressure cooker emphasizes speed under pressure.
VitaClay follows a different philosophy:
It's not about making every food cook as fast as technologically possible.
It's about making real cooking easier to fit into real life.
Wardee's updated review evaluates VitaClay's different cookers and identifies the new Nourishing Pot as her preferred model. Her review highlights its expanded functionality and versatility for the kinds of foods she regularly prepares.
The 6.5-quart VitaClay Nourishing Pot was designed as an all-in-one nourishing cooker for foods such as:
Bone broth and stocks
Soups and stews
Rice and whole grains
Beans
Oatmeal and porridges
Yogurt
Steamed foods
One-pot meals
Long, low-temperature cooking
At its center is something VitaClay has believed in for more than two decades:
The cooking vessel matters.
Instead of food cooking directly against a conventional metal or coated nonstick insert, VitaClay uses a natural, unglazed clay cooking pot.
And instead of requiring you to monitor that clay pot over a stove or fire, modern programmability takes care of the cooking.
This is the part of Wardee's review that resonates deeply with me.
We live very differently from our grandparents and great-grandparents.
We work.
We run businesses.
We raise children.
We commute.
We travel.
Our phones never seem to stop.
And somewhere along the way, convenience food became the answer to our lack of time.
But I have never believed that our only choices should be:
Spend all day cooking from scratch
or
Give up real cooking altogether.
There has to be another way.
I came to food from an unusual direction.
I was an engineer.
But over the years, I became increasingly passionate about nutrition, traditional foods and the connection between what we eat and how we nourish ourselves and our families.
Clay cooking fascinated me because it was ancient and beautifully simple.
Humans had been cooking in clay for generations.
Yet modern families needed convenience.
That became my challenge:
Could you put real ingredients into a natural clay pot...
press a button...
walk away...
and come home to real food?
That's the idea that became VitaClay.
And more than 25 years later, it's still the mission.
— Michelle Liu, Founder of VitaClay
This is where I think Wardee's philosophy and VitaClay's philosophy meet.
Traditional cooking isn't about rejecting everything modern.
And technology doesn't have to mean replacing real food.
Sometimes the smartest use of technology is to remove the work while preserving the practice.
You can still soak your grains.
Make broth from bones.
Cook beans.
Make soup from yesterday's chicken.
Prepare oatmeal for the family.
Cook a one-pot dinner from whole ingredients.
But you don't have to stand beside the stove watching it.
Interestingly, Wardee doesn't present VitaClay and the Instant Pot as enemies.
She uses both.
In her review, she says she uses VitaClay as often as her Instant Pot and sometimes more, while describing VitaClay's cooking style as falling somewhere between a slow cooker and pressure cooker.
We think that's an important distinction.
Different cooking methods solve different problems.
Pressure cooking can be extremely useful when speed is the priority.
VitaClay is for cooks attracted to something different:
Hands-free cooking in natural clay without pressure.
For broth, soup, grains, beans and nourishing one-pot meals, that can be a compelling combination.
The better question may be:
What would you like waiting for you when you come home?
Add bones, water, vegetables, herbs and aromatics and let the Nourishing Pot handle the long cooking cycle.
[Internal link: How to Make Bone Broth in VitaClay →]
Chicken soup. Beef stew. Lentil soup. Herbal soups. Vegetable soup.
Real comfort food made from real ingredients.
[Internal link: Explore VitaClay Soup Recipes →]
Rice, whole grains, oatmeal, porridges and warm breakfasts are exactly the kinds of everyday foods that turn an appliance into something you actually use.
Wardee even shares an Apple-Blueberry “Cream of Wheat” recipe as part of her Nourishing Pot review.
Build dinner around vegetables, grains, legumes and optional proteins in a single pot.
Less attention.
Less cleanup.
More real food.
We can talk about features all day.
Programs.
Capacity.
Temperature.
Timers.
But ultimately, there's a simpler measure.
That's why Wardee's statement stands out:
“I use our VitaClay cooker practically every day!”
For someone who teaches people how to prepare traditional food, everyday use means much more to us than another list of specifications.
It tells us VitaClay has earned a place in her kitchen.
Maybe we don't need another kitchen gadget promising to make food disappear into thirty-second convenience.
Maybe what many of us actually need is something that helps us come back to cooking.
Bones becoming broth.
Grains becoming breakfast.
Vegetables becoming soup.
A few simple ingredients becoming dinner.
A warm pot waiting when the family comes home.
That's not going backward.
That's bringing something valuable forward.
Wardee Harmon is the founder and lead teacher behind Traditional Cooking School and an author and educator focused on traditional food preparation, including sourdough, fermentation, grains and real-food cooking. (Traditional Cooking School)
Yes. In her updated VitaClay review, Wardee says she uses her VitaClay cooker practically every day and uses it for foods including grains, soups and broth.
In her updated comparison, Wardee labels the Nourishing Pot “The Clear Winner.”
No. VitaClay cooks without pressure. Wardee describes its functionality as falling between conventional slow cooking and pressure cooking.
The Nourishing Pot is designed for bone broth, soups, stews, rice, grains, beans, oatmeal, yogurt, steaming, one-pot meals and customizable low-temperature cooking.
The Nourishing Pot uses a natural, unglazed clay cooking vessel rather than a conventional nonstick-coated cooking insert.
Real ingredients.
Natural clay.
Programmable convenience.
And food worth coming home to.
Discover the VitaClay Nourishing Pot 👇
Cook • Nourish • Gather • Thrive
Ancient Clay. Modern Convenience. Real Nourishment.
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