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Energy Saver: Cooking Techniques
First, let's have a few words about safety. This may be obvious but humor me. Do not use cooking equipment to heat your house or other spaces occupied by people (or animals). That can be dangerous for so many reasons. Just don't do it. However, the 'junk' heat energy from cooking can be used to your benefit or detriment. Never leave a cooking operation unattended. Things can go wrong quickly.
In this article you will learn how and why cooking on the BBQ in the summer, cooking in the kitchen in winter and putting a lid on pots at any time are ways to reduce energy while cooking favorite things.
There is a wide range of stove top burners (or electric heating elements) as well as output capacities. I will use the terms 'element' and 'burner' interchangeably in this article. Let's look at a standard capacity stove that can be obtained at a residential appliance outlet. Visualize this: you are planning a meal. Your plan is to make a pasta dish and a meat dish on your stove top. On average, it will likely take about fifteen (15) minutes to bring a medium pot of water up to boil for the pasta. I used eight (8) cups in my experiment as it was the amount recommended on this particular pasta label.
However, I don't agree with that amount of water and you can read why in the article on how much water you should use for cooking. Anyhow, you then add the pasta and simmer it to 'al dente' for another ten (10) minutes. Meanwhile, on another burner you are browning some ground beef for your meat dish and that takes about fifteen (15) minutes. You add your room temperature spices and flavorings to the browned burger. Then, you warm the mix back up to cooking ...