



Thermal cookers are not new and were known as Fireless Cookers a 100 years ago here in the USA. Many old recipe books from that era are available online for free or have been republished and can be bought in book form.
One interesting cook book was from Gone With the Wind author Margaret Michell who before becoming famous wrote a great book on fireless cooking.
Below are links to the online versions and reprinted versions of a number of cook book/recipe books on fireless cooking which can be used directly in a modern thermal cooker. Some of the old recipe books reference a “radiator” which was often a soap stone or cement disk that was heated up on a stove and then placed in the insulated box under the pot that held the food. The stone radiated heat and helped keep the temperatures up inside the cookers and even allowed for some baking to be done inside the fireless cook box.
The Fireless Cook Book by Gone With the Wind Author Margaret Mitchell
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24359…less_cook_book
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
The Duplex cook book, containing full instructions for cooking with the Duplex fireless stove
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL78905…plex_cook_book
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
Meals That Cook Themselves And Cut The Costs
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL75412…_cut_the_costs
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
Book of Caloric Recipes
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL23760…_stove_recipes
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
The Fireless Cooker, How to make it, How to use it, What to cook
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6953828M/High_living
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
Fireless Cooker Recipes
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL13849…cooker_recipes
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
The Fireless Cooker
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL78867…ireless_cooker
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
Superior fireless cookery
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL13842…reless_cookery
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
Thermatic Fireless Cooker Recipes – A treatise on the management of the Thermatic fireless cooker, together with over 250 carefully selected recipes.
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL13840…lected_recipes
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
The Winston cook book, planned for a family of four
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24160…family_of_four
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
Simple Cooking of Wholesome Food for the Farm Home
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL78973…_the_farm_home
Reprint of this book for sale at Amazon
Thermos Cookery
La Gourmet Thermal Wonder Cooker
via A Singaporean Uncle in Australia: How to cook with a Thermos Flask.
I wish I had thought of this idea myself, but it so simple that I thought it is funny even to post it here. Neverthelees I want to show to Ange of France that it is possible to cook with a thermos flask!
In fact this cooking method is such a practical method that I use it often to cook my morning cereal or bento (packed lunch) for my workplace. My wife has her own thermos flask to cook her own special multi grain recipe. She mixes 8 kinds of grains which are brown rice, sorghum, buckwheat, barley, wheat, oat, millet, and black glutinous rice. She believes her homemade multi grains mixed are loaded with vitamins, minerals and fibre and much more nutritional than the store bought type. You probably can’t go wrong incorporating such a variety of grains in your diet. You can cook any whole grain in a thermos flask. I used a 1-litre Jackeroo Thermos Flask. It has an unbreakable stainless steel inner liner.
Fuel Efficient Cooking with an Insulated Box
What a great example of using a retained heat cooker! Cooking beans is the perfect example of the strength of using a thermal type cooker. All the goodness with 80%-90% of the fuel being saved.
The people over at www.iwillprepare.com have posted some great instructions on making a wonder box. Here’s what they have to say:
Wonder Box Instructions (Printable PDF Format)
A wonder box is a heat retention cooker. After you bring your food to a boil, (so it is heated throughout) using any number of cooking methods, you remove it from the heat source and quickly place the pot inside the wonder box.
The insulation of the wonder box will slow your food’s loss of heat keeping at cooking temperatures for hours. Using a wonder box reduces the amount of fuel needed to cook your meal because the fuel that would normally be used to keep your food at cooking temperatures after it has started boiling is eliminated.
Materials:
Instructions:
Notes: The major benefit of the Wonder Box is to reduce the fuel you need to cook your meals. By simply bringing your food to boiling temperature for 3 minutes (15 minutes for beans) and then turning off the heat and quickly placing the pot in the Wonder Box. [The important point is to make sure that the food is at boiling temperature throughout, so large pieces of meat may need to be cubed or make sure you give it time to heat thoroughly]. The heat already in your food, combined with the insulation of the Wonder Box, will allow your meal to keep cooking “at safe cooking temperatures” for hours. Remember, the less space there is around the pot, the less heat will be lost
One source stated that you can save up to 80% of your needed fuel by using a Wonder Box because the heat used for simmering is eliminated. What kind of meals can you cook in a Wonder Box? Most meals that you would cook in a Crock Pot. Meals that simmer in liquid. Rice, Chili, Stews, Soups, etc… Your food should be entirely covered with liquid, so if you are cooking a whole chicken or a roast, make sure the food is completely covered. With a little creativity, even other foods can be cooked in the Wonder Box. For example, a few whole potatoes in an oven cooking bag placed in a pot of water brought to a boil, will cook without being water logged. The Wonder Box is a slow cooker, Rice will take about an hour, a whole chicken in 3-4 hours. Tip: cook your breakfast and lunch at the same time using the same coals. By Lunch time, your meal will be ready. You can’t burn food in a Wonder Box. As long as your food stays over 160º F, Your food can cook all day. One source recommended not using your Wonder Box while it is sitting on metal as it may some of the heat through the bottom.
The Wonder Box can be washed using hot water and soap and dried on a clothes line.
We grew up drinking lots of soup made by mummy. Asian mum loves to make soups. Soups are nutritious and they really warms your heart. Hope this Corn and Pork Rib Soup will warm yours too!
Preparation Time: 8 mins
Cooking Time: 10 mins
Waiting Time: 2-3 hours
Ingredients:
1 Carrot
1 Tomato
2 Sweet Corns
1 small bit of young ginger
1/2 kg Pork Ribs
Preparation:
1. Cut the tomato into wedges. (4 or 6 wedges, up to you)
2. Break the corns into 3 pieces.
3. Cut the carrots into little chunks.
4. Clean the ginger by getting rid of the skin and cut them in big pieces.
5. Prepare the pork by boiling a pot of water and boil the pork for 5 mins then drain.
6. Pour all the ingredients into the pot with 1.5 litres of water.
7. If you are like us, we like using Thermal Pots. This is an OEM brand which is cheaper. You can get Tiger or Le Gourmet brands which cost 3 or 4 times more, and yet work the same.
We boil the above for 5 mins and then turn it off and transfer the pot into the Thermal Pot. Wait for 2 or 3 hours.
8. When we are ready to serve, we take out the pot, boil it again for a few minutes and then serve. Add salt to your taste.
We usually prepare the soups on Saturday mornings around 9 AM. We will drink the soup at noon. We like using Thermal pots because we do not need to care about the fire.
If you realise, we use an induction cooker too! Induction cooker converts 80-90% of energy to heat, compare to other types of cooking methods (eg gas flame, hot plates) that usually only use 45% of the energy and the rest wasted.
For those interested:
Carrot: Daucus carota subsp. sativus
Domestic Pig: Sus scrofa domestica
Ginger: Zingiber officinale
Sweet Corn: Zea mays var. rugosa
Tomato: Solanum lycopersicum
Comments on cooking bread and other things in a wonderbox cooker:
Steamed bread in a wonderbox — turned out fabulous. We left it in the hot water to rise then boiled it for ten minutes and kept it in the wonderbox for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Here is some detail about the wonderbox bread…
I put the whole wheat bread dough in a oiled cereal bag (the waxed-
paper-like inner lining bag in boxes of cereal). Then I twisted up the
end and closed it with a twist tie. I then placed this bag inside a
Reynolds oven bag and twisted up the end of that bag. Rather than
putting the twist tie on at that point, I folded over the twisted end,
making a loop and then secured it with a twist tie, creating a double
reinforcement and less probability of water leaking in. I have heard
it being done in a Zip-loc bag as well, but I was pleased with the
cereal bag and oven bag. When picking a bag, you are concerned with
its ability to withstand the heat of boiling and ability to get a tight
seal when closing as water seeping into the bread will ruin it.
Then I put the dough in a pan of hot water to rise. After it had
risen, I boiled it for ten minutes and then placed the pan with the
dough in it and with the lid on in the Wonder Box. I left it there for
1 hour and 45 minutes. It was perfect. The bread comes out round and
is not browned, but very moist and light. You will not get overdone,
dry bread this way.
BREAD Recipe:
4 cups whole wheat, brown or white flour, or mixed as you wish
1tsp each yeast and sugar mixed, added to ¼ cup warm water
1 cup warm water with 1 tsp salt added
Mix and knead the dough (or add ¼ cup warm water and merely stir it well). Roll the dough in dry flour and place it in an ordinary (crisp, cereal) plastic bag which has had a little oil rubbed around inside.
To reduce time needed for this it can be left submerged in warm water in the wonder box.
When it has doubled its size, it should be brought to boil in the water and boiled for about 10 minutes. Transfer the bread in the pot of water to a wonder box for an hour to finish cooking when it should have a soft “crust”.
I have fielded numerous requests from readers who are making their own wonder boxes, and wanting to know what type of material would be best for the cushions.
Cushions have to be of a soft material that will squish firmly around the top, bottom and sides of your wonder box. Another idea is to use the inners of old, flat pillows.
Another example of making bread in a wonderbox
I have been baking bread in a wonderbox for awhile now. My recipe is for 2 loaves (whole wheat). I put one in the wonderbox and one in the oven. I raise the bread by putting it in a cereal bag that has been sprayed with cooking spray. I put a twistertie on that and then put that in an oven bag, twist it up and then double the twisted part over and put on the twister tie. That part looks like a loop. Anyway I put the bagged dough in a pot of warm water to rise. When it has doubled, I bring the whole thing to a boil and boil for 10 minutes. Then put the whole thing in the wonderbox and go away. Once it was in there for over 8 hours and the bread was still warm. I think the least amount of time has been one hour.
The bread does not have a crust and is usually oval, but it is moist and delicious. In fact when I have people try a bit from the oven baked and the wonderbox, they prefer the wonderbox bread hands down.
So do I.
I have reused the cereal bag. I make my own cereal so I don’t have those kind regularly. I’ve tried ziploc bags for the outside and sometimes they pop open from the rising bread. If it gets under water, the bread is ruined.
Bean Soup
I made bean soup. I soaked the beans over night, then boiled them 20 minutes, and after a couple of hours in the wonderbox, I took them out to put some bean flour in to thicken it and reheated it for another 20 minutes before putting it back in. All together it was probably 6-7 hours in there, but no burning or sticking, and I left it that long because that was when I was using the soup…
BTW, I was using the ice box cooler for the thermal outer container which I placed the bean pot inside. I first wrapped the bean pot in a wool blanket and then put a pillow on top of the pot and blanket before closing the cooler lid. I have also been using a half of a mylar space blanket in the wonderbox and the ice box cooker both to retain heat, but also to keep the wonderbox clean and dry and to keep the wool blanket dry. I think that really helps.
Fireless cookers were very popular in the early 1900s to save labor and fuel, rather like our crock pots. Many books of the time contained recipes for them. An early wood bucket with an inner metal pail surrounded by sawdust [a portable insulating pail] is in the Tuskegee Institute collection. A more elaborate example, a two pot fireless cooker with heating soapstones that would be placed above and below each pot, (pictured above) can be seen at the Woodrow Wilson House in D.C. In electric fireless cookers “the current is applied just long enough to bring the food to a proper temperature…then the current automatically shuts off, but the dinner continues to cook without expense…” An interesting link discusses a British tank built during the 1920s & 30s which could carry the fireless cooker with 3 days rations. Cooking time varied. In a 1925 letter: “We prepared our dinner in the morning before breakfast, stowed it away in the electric fireless cooker and at night we set the table and served it.” Recipes from Mitchell’s book generally involved bringing the contents to a boil, placing the pot immediately in the fireless cooker and cooking…stews for 9-12 hrs, applesauce 1-3 hrs, string beans (with salt and baking soda in the water) 6-12 hrs, limas 1 1/2 hrs, and plum pudding 5 hours. She also details how to make fireless cooker or “hay-box”, and a “refrigerating box”, with suggestions for decorating the box for use in the dining room. Types of insulation were soft “hay, straw, paper, wool, mineral wool, excelsior, ground cork, Southern moss, sawdust…”
Books
Frederick, Christine. Meals that cook themselves and cut the costs. New Haven: c1915
Greer, Carlotta. School and Home Cooking
Mitchell, Margaret J. The Fireless Cook Book [New York: 1909], 1913
Various references in books. Hearth Collection
Articles
The Fireless Cooker by Dr.Alice Ross
Hay bucket picture c1920
Fireless Cooker Company
Chambers Fireless Gas Range
Copeman Automatic Cooker, c1912
Copeman Electric Stove Company
Electric fireless cooker
The Nation, 1909 … The fireless cooker
The Rains County Leader Texas, 1913
Journal of Home Economics: 1915. Pressure Cooker Versus Fireless Cooker for Home Use
Picture series to make fireless cookers; and types of fireless cookers pics.
Fireless cooker in car. 1923
Letter: c1925. dinner …in the electric
Letter: 1925. electric fireless cooker among other failed machines
Frankfurt Kitchen, a mass-produced, low-priced kitchen, 1927
Britain’s Mk II Medium Tanks
Our First Overland Trip to Colorado
Scouting for Girls: Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts. 1920 – Fireless cooker
Fireless cooker and chifonnear, 1912
Glenwood-Robertshaw AutomatiCook
Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, Bailey. 1908
Haybox, Retained Heat or Fireless Cooker – current use in Malawi, Bolivia…
How to make a food warmer/fireless cooker (hot box) – current use
Museums
DC Woodrow Wilson House. Washington, DC
KS Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum. Wichita
MD Belair Mansion. Bowie
NE High Plains Museum. Mc Cook
When young and adventurous, we enjoyed family tent camping. We sneered at the “wimps” who used trailers—even including those who used camping trailers. We were purists. One year, a friend loaned us a few days of relaxation in his 16 foot travel trailer. A revelation! This was living!
We learned that deprivation was not nearly as much fun as it was to be camping with all the amenities. It was made even more clear as we watched the folks in the next campsite while they stood around in a drizzle waiting for their Coleman stove to heat up water for coffee.
Recalling this episode got me to thinking about how cool or room-temperature food will add to the misery in a down-grid situation. Hot meals are just about required for making everything else endurable. But in a continuing crisis one vital concern will be how to conserve fuel, yet provide hot meals.
Here’s a slick solution: “fireless” cooking.
Your crock-pot is the latest application of this old, old idea. But the old idea as you will see is better because your homemade fireless cooker won’t require electricity.
The idea is simple: food in a pot is heated to boiling on your stove, then allowed to simmer for a few minutes; then the pot lid is clapped on and the pot is quickly transferred to a well insulated box. More insulation is stuffed around and on top of the pot, filling the entire box; then the lid is closed tightly. Now you can turn off the stove! After four hours or so (timing is not critical), the food is ready to eat. If the pot is not disturbed (peeking is not allowed!), the food will still be hot even after six or more hours.
Here’s the payoff: (1) not much fuel is used and (2), the food can be prepared well before it is needed.
Your fireless cooker can be readily created using a fiberglass ice chest. Ours has wheels and a collapsible handle. This is handy for having the chest near the stove for moving pots to it quickly, then rolling it out of the way while it does its job.
To adapt your ice chest:
1.Put a piece of plywood on the bottom of the chest to keep the hot pot from damaging the chest’s plastic bottom.
2. Use a pot which will provide enough stew to feed your family and which has small handles. Don’t use a pot which has large handles because you want the insulation to snuggle up against the pot at all points.
3. How to provide insulation for the pot:
Get a supply of styrofoam “peanuts” used for shipping and sew them up into bags that will nestle the pot. Dish towels make a nice size for these bags—or cut lengths from the legs of old slacks and sew one end shut. Sew the bags, leaving one edge open; that way you can adjust the quantity of peanuts as you create the nest. Don’t overfill these bags; they should be flexible to conform to the pot. Pin the open end temporarily. Put your pot in the chest and arrange the bags around it so that there will be no air spaces between the pot and the walls of the chest. Now remove the bags and sew them shut.
Cut a couple of old bath towels into smaller pieces to stuff in odd corners if needed to gently fill any air pockets. Make a large peanut-filled bag to cover all this so that closing the lid will result in a chest completely filled with peanut bags and a pot. Later on, you can try using more than one pot, but let’s make this basic for now.
Carefully remove the pot so that the nest is undisturbed. That’s because when you do the actual cooking, you will want to get the hot pot into its nest quickly. Now you are ready.
1. If using meat in your meal, cut it intro bite-sized pieces and gently fry it till just done, then transfer it to the stewpot. Or cook it right in the pot. Add the vegetables, water, spices et cetera so that the pot is 2/3 full—no more: the hot air between the lid and the top of the stew is important. Oh, and soft veggies, peas for example, should go in the pot 10 minutes or so before serving.
2. Heat your stew to boiling and immediately move the container into your fireless cooker; leave it alone 4 or more hours, that’s it.
3. Most crockpot recipes can be adapted for this technique—except those that call for adding ingredients while the cooking is underway. Remember, in fireless cooking, peeking is not allowed, so neither is adding anything after you’ve nested your pot, except at the very end (see above about peas).
One wonderful advantage to this process is the opportunity to eat any time after a few hours—food will still be hot, but not overcooked because the cooker is allowing it to gradually (really gradually) lose heat. This means the cook doesn’t have to be working just before the meal is served. In fact, the cook can sit and enjoy the meal with everybody at the table. And the meal doesn’t need to be ready at any set time–the meal will be ready and stay ready for several hours. So a dinnertime emergency calling the troops away won’t be a kitchen disaster
Besides the advantage of using heat only to fry meat and bring the stew to a boil, you can prepare a meal long before it will be eaten and you don’t have to stand over a stove making sure nothing burns.
Stew recipes are not only easily adapted to this cooking technique, they are very nutritious because the liquid is not poured off, throwing away a lot of food value. Add a hearty slice of two of whole wheat bread and your meals will be delicious and filling.
Prepare a meal in the morning to eat during or after a TV football game and no one has to spend time in the kitchen preparing. Or use this technique to prepare for a tailgate party—no on-site cooking!
When you get the hang of this technique, you will want to try using more than one pot to make, for example, a dessert to accompany the meal.
Practice using this wonderful technique now; it’s simple, and it will give you one more valuable tool if disaster strikes.
Bon appetit! (You can find lots of additional information on the Internet with web search for “fireless cooking”.)
http://www.bioenergylists.org/en/cookers
PCIAi Guide to Designing Retained Heat Cookers
Cooking in a Basket Website
Kakamega Forest Cooking Basket |
Bolivia
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Germany (1921)
Guatemala
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Kenya
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Malawi
Tanzania
Tanzanian Hayboxes, Stoves, and Wonderbaskets, Meg Arenberg, Sunseed Tanzaniai Trust, August 2005
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Frederick A. Draper
The expression “tireless cooking” is not strictly applicable to the process to be here described, but is sufficiently near it to make it applicable as a short title. For many years the ” hay box” has been in regular use, and has proved of great utility for certain kinds of cooking. While not of particular value in many lines claimed by its over enthusiastic advocates, it is, nevertheless, worthy of careful consideration in every household, and this is especially true on hot summer days when a morning fire can be used to produce a hot meal to be served up in the evening.
The principle involved in the operation is that of retained heat. The food to be cooked is put in a suitable utensil upon the stove where it is thoroughly heated. It should remain upon the stove long enough to bring the contents to the boiling point, and continue at that temperature for an interval varying with the kind of food being cooked. The heated utensil and food are then placed in an insulated box constructed to prevent the loss of heat, where they remain for a number of hours. The contained heat in the food serves to thoroughly cook it in such a way as to retain the best flavors of the food, and it will be found that tough meat can be made much more palatable by this-process than by any other method of cooking.
The experienced housekeeper will readily understand the limitations of this method of cooking. Stews, boiled meats, vegetables and cereals are the kinds of food particularly successful. Baked beans and roast meats must be browned in a hot oven before being placed in the cooker; otherwise they will lack the color desired in dishes of that kind. As there is no evaporation of the liquid contents from the vessel, it is necessary to have the portions of food exactly as desired when served upon the table. It is necessary, therefore, to have color and flavoring ingredients exactly proportioned at the beginning of operations.
The first attempt with an experimental apparatus made by the writer was that of a 10-pound ham which was boiled for 30 minutes in a ten quart enamelled ware kettle; placed in the cooker at 10.30 A. M. and removed at 6 P. M. The ham was found to be thoroughly cooked, tender and having a most delicious flavor. Corned beef, beef stews, and vegetables were afterwards tried with marked success. One peculiarity about cooking vegetables in this way is that they do not break up as when boiled upon the stove.
The essential feature of the cooker is perfect insulation of utensil and contents, and the better the heat is retained the more satisfactorily will the food be cooked. For a small family a cooker having two or three compartments for holding kettles of different sizes will be quite sufficient. The shape known as a stock kettle is preferable as, having straight sides it can more easily be thoroughly packed.
In making a cooker it is first necessary to select the kettles to be used therein, and for a two compartment cooker, one kettle holding ten or twelve quarts and one holding four quarts, will be found to serve most purposes.
A two compartment cooker holding kettles of this size will require an outside box 36 in. long, 20 in. wide and 20 in. deep, inside measurements. Such a case can be easily made up from two shoe packing boxes, selecting the boards with matched joints. This is divided into two compartments by a division board 16 in. high placed 20 in. from one end. An inside top is then fitted to cover the division board and extending the full length of the box, leaving a space about 3 in-between the top of the inside cover and the top of the box. This is shown in the accompanying illustration.
Holes are then cut in the center of each division of a size to admit the cooking utensils with about one-half inch space between the utensil and the edge of the hole. Discs of wood are cut out the same size as the holes cut in the inside cover. Sheet tin or the sides of some large cheese boxes are cut and bent to cylindrical form to fit inside of the holes, and the wooden discs are used for the bottoms of these cylinders.
After nailing the cylinder firmly in place the box is turned bottom side up, and the space between the cylinders and sides of the box is firmly packed with chopped cork, sawdust, or old newspapers. The bottom of the box is then nailed on. If chopped cork or sawdust is used it will be desirable to first paper the inside surface of the box and cylinder to prevent the fine particles of cork or dust from sifting through any fine cracks which may have been left.
Strips of wood two inches wide are then nailed around the top side of the inner cover. These strips should have the inner edges cut to a bevel of about 45 degrees. Two covers are then made to fit inside these strips with the edges to correspond with the bevel on the strips. The cover should be carefully fitted to make the joints as tight as possible. A top cover is then made for the box, the two covers being much on the same plan as that of an ice chest and serving the same purpose.
In using the cooker it is desirable to first heat the cylindrical chambers; it can best be done by filling the utensil to be placed therein with boiling hot water and allowing it to remain there as long as convenient. The heat absorbed from the water by the cooker reduces the amount of heat which will be taken up from the food which is later placed therein. The space between the top and inner cover may also be filled with a quilted cover, or any convenient piece of cloth or rug, which will further prevent the evaporation of heat at the top. The space between the kettle and the sides of the cylindrical chamber may also be filled to advantage with old papers, or what is better, a quilted wrapper may be made which will exactly fill the space.
In using the cooker it is necessary to keep in mind that the process of cooking is slower than when using a stove, but over-cooking is not detrimental, in fact, over-cooking is almost an impossibility. It may also be stated that the advantages of a cooker are much greater than at first thought may seem possible. Readers of the magazine who are desirous of helping the feminine portion of the family to save work are earnestly advised to make a cooker as here described, as by means of one kitchen work in the summer can be made much easier and more comfortable. Food can also be reheated in the morning to serve warm at night.
The fireless cooker was a strange beast. Even its name seemed to be a contradiction in terms. It cooked without fire and provided an effortless hot meal. Its early history is open to speculation and lies vaguely in the past, but came into prominence at the turn of the twentieth century, at least for the modern collector, with the development and promotion of commercial versions.
It may be that the origin of fireless cookers arose from the needs of early rural folk whose work sometimes took them too far from home to get back for the much needed noon dinner. Imagine a haying crew or harvesters in somewhat distant fields, pressing on to accomplish as much as possible, for as long as favorable weather held, but whose arduous labors demanded nutritional recharging and physical rest. An easy carry-along meal of bread and cheese may not have sufficed for such demanding occasions; the time it took to travel home and then back would have cut substantially into the necessary restoration of body and spirit.
The fireless cookery system required that a long-cooking soup, stew, or porridge be set on to cook very early in the day. When it was roughly half-cooked (and presumably synchronized with the departure time of our hypothetical farmer ), it was placed—food, pot, cover and all—into a tightly closed container and buried within an insulated container, to be carried along for eventual consumption. During this time, the food continued to cook via its own residual heat, and could be expected to be ready a few hours later when needed.
Tracking down early fireless cookers reveals occasional early references to “hay boxes.” These seem to have been crude, homemade containers of almost any sort, filled with hay (insulation), and in which a hot pot of food was kept warm until such time as it could be consumed. This kind of make-shift equipment was unlikely to have survived in recognizable form, and even collectors of folk art will probably not be able to identify them from such vague and indefinite descriptions.
Hay boxes accompanied not only farmers but also many overland emigrants to the western territories. Families traveled with constant pressure to cover as many miles during daylight as they possibly could, and could not allow themselves the time to start fires and cook in the middle of the day. In fact, surviving trail maps indicate plainly that travelers could not expect supplies of potable water and burnable firewood at all stopping places. Given the arduousness of walking miles each day, and the need for sufficient calories, substantial noon dinners (hopefully hot) were essential. The problem was solved by cooking late the previous evening, occasionally overnight and early morning, and then, before leaving the site, packing the hot, perhaps unfinished noon dinner in a portable hay box for final cooking or keeping hot.
The term “hay box,” still in use by 1900, was soon to be supplanted by another term: the “fireless cooker.” These were sturdier hinge-lidded affairs, wooden boxes with hay insulation packed around carefully shaped and sized holes that would just hold covered metal pails or canisters of food. Margaret J. Mitchell, in her thorough-going work The Fireless Cook Book [New York: 1909], used both terms, and touted them as a new adjunct in the home kitchen or small institutions—boarding houses or lunch-rooms, for example. She recommended them as labor-saving and a means to better-tasting and nutritious cookery. Her book offered directions for making several models at home, and they seem to be relatively simple and common-sensical. She cites the advantages and disadvantages of hay boxes made of purchased boxes or barrels, styles of kettles and pots, insulation materials, etc. and explains how to best use them. Mitchell also offered a large number of both original and adapted recipes. Citing their considerable early use in Norway and other European nations, she declared that dishes usually prepared by boiling or steaming, and even some kinds of baking, could be prepared in a simple hay box, and believed that the newly developed insulated cooker, an offshoot of manufactured fireless cookers, would work well for baking. She recommended them for their economy of fuel, space on the stove, efforts, utensils, work time, and wholesome results. And she noted the absence of heat and odors in the kitchen, improved flavors, and bearing on “the servant question.”
Eventually fireless cookers were manufactured as metal chests. These were double-walled (to hold insulation) steel boxes on legs. The interior was all metal, and featured built-in cylindrical holes to hold the covered canisters that just fit them. In addition, they now contained pairs of thick soapstone plates, also sized to just fit the holes, one below and one atop the food canister. The heavy hinged, double-walled lid fit neatly over these. Some had specially insulated cushions to place between the canister tops and soapstone plates and the lid. These soapstone cylinders were a new feature- the pre-heated stones added heat for more efficient cooking times and temperatures. In earlier versions, it is possible that the same kinds of preheated soapstones that heated small portable warmers (to be carried to church or in a carriage in winter to keep one’s feet warm) were adapted to such cookery.
It may be of particular significance that so many of the books and pamphlets promoting fireless cookers were written in 1917 and 1918, possibly influenced by the needs of World War I. Constance C. Radcliffe Cooke’s The Cooking-Box: How To Make And Use It, Together With Eighty Economical Recipes Adapted For Fireless Cookery, was used as a text in local English Cooking Centres and cooking schools throughout Britain; American ephemera- Fireless Cooking, Containing Directions and Recipes ( 1918 ) and Delicious Fireless Cooked Dishes (1919) seem to be similarly influenced. War needs appear to have capitalized on this earlier technique.
Margaret J. Mitchell, an American writer addressing the social and cultural needs of her peers, focused on the new perception that the new modern woman could free herself for an afternoon out, while still having a hot dinner for her family in the evening. This angle was clearly featured in commercial promotional ephemera and cookbooks. In some ways this reflected the new craze that brought “science” into the kitchen, and cooking schools’ vision that fireless cookers were “the wave of the future.”
This is a clear example of social need being the mother of invention. Freeing up women’s time fit the orientation of the “modern woman” of the time, who had increasingly taken on the important work of philanthropy—fund raising to support causes (churches, welfare reform, community improvement, or politics). In addition, the “New American Girl” was athletic and involved in women’s clubs dedicated to education, culture, or entertainment. As such fireless cookers were one of the early home technology innovations that were meant to take women out of the home, as opposed to so many domestic innovations, among them the woodstove and the canning jar, that increased household responsibilities and kept women home-bound. In this light, one can make a parallel to the modern crock pot, a standby also designed for women out of the home. Although crockpots depend on electricity, their rationale is the same—a slow-cooking moist dish that one sets up in the morning and eats some hours later as a main dinner dish.
In light of the centuries-long, slow evolution of hearth technology and its subsequent cook-stove adaptations, the fireless cooker appears to have used its “primitive” roots to leap into the early twentieth century kitchen. What may have seemed an incredibly revolutionary technique to early crock-pot users was really just another adaptation to changing fuels. Today it would be interesting to learn just how many kitchens held them, how often they were indeed used, and whether they were more common in cooking schools and home economics classes than they were in homes. In any case, they seem to have faded away and become novelties within only a few decades. Perhaps they required too much space, gave way to easily adjustable gas and electric stoves, or reflected a basic change in women’s cookery.
Alice Ross brings 25 years as a dedicated food professional teacher, writer, researcher and collector to her Hearth Studios, at which she teaches workshops in various aspects of hearth, woodstove and brick oven cookery. She has served as consultant in historical food for such noted museums as Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg and The Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts. Ross wrote her doctoral dissertation in food history at the State University at Stony Brook. Currently, she is involved in a major kitchen report on Rock Hall Museum, a 1770’s Georgian mansion on Long Island. Dr. Ross’ e-mail address is aross@binome.com. Her web site is www.aliceross.com |
Here are some instructions and recipes on using a thermal cooker.
Heat-retention cooking (or retained-heat cooking) saves cooking fuel because after food has been heated to cooking temperature, it is placed into an insulated box where it will continue to cook until it is done. Retained-heat cooking is often introduced along with solar cooking since it further reduces the use of traditional fuels such as firewood, and the use of this method allows much more food to be cooked each day in a solar cooker. This method of cooking is also known as fireless cooking, haybox cooking, or wonder box cooking.
When combining retained heat and solar cooking, if food has gotten thoroughly hot in an solar box cooker (SBC), but clouds arrive before the food is finished cooking, a switch from solar to retained heat cooking should be made before the oven temperature drops below the boiling point. For large recipes this may be accomplished by simply closing the reflective lid on the pots of cooking foods. For smaller recipes, the solar oven is opened, taking care not to allow steam to escape from under the lids, pots are pushed close together along with any heated additional mass. Insulating pads or soft cushions are tucked closely around the pots and well heated mass. The SBC lid is then closed. This effectively makes the transition from solar to retained heat cooking. The cooker lid remains closed until shortly before serving time, when the food is tested. If not completely done, a very little conventional fuel will usually finish the job.Usually solar/retained heat cooking is done right where the SBC is located. However, a lightweight portable SBC can be moved temporarily indoors for its retained heat cooking time if the sun clouds over or if it rains. It may also be brought inside more or less permanently during the off season or at night and function as an insulated box for retained heat cooking. Used in this way the SBC continues to save fuel rather than simply being stored until conditions are right for solar cooking.
COOKING WITH RETAINED HEAT
http://www.inforse.dk/europe/dieret/Biomass/biomass.html
In regions where much of the daily cooking involves a long simmering period (required for many beans, grains, stews and soups) the amount of fuel needed to complete the cooking process can be greatly reduced by cooking with retained heat. This is a practice of ancient origin which is still used in some parts of the world today.
In some areas a pit is dug and lined with rocks previously heated in a fire. The food to be cooked is placed in the lined pit, often covered with leaves, and the whole is covered by a mound of earth. The heat from the rocks is retained by the earth insulation, and the food cooks slowly over time.
Another version of this method consists of digging a pit and lining it with hay or another good insulating material. A pot of food which has previously been heated up to a boil is placed in the pit, covered with more hay and then earth, and allowed to cook slowly with the retained heat.
THE HAYBOX COOKER
This latter method is the direct ancestor of the Haybox Cooker, which is simply a well insulated box lined with a reflective material into which a pot of food previously brought to a boil is placed. The food is cooked in 3 to 6 hours by the heat retained in the insulated box. The insulation greatly slows the loss of conductive heat, convective heat in the surrounding air is trapped inside the box, and the shiny lining reflects the radiant heat back into the pot.
Simple haybox style cookers could be introduced along with fuel-saving cook stoves in areas where slow cooking is practised. How these boxes should be made, and from what materials, is perhaps best left to people working in each region. Ideally, of course, they should be made of inexpensive, locally available materials and should fit standard pot sizes used in the area.
BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS
There are several principles which should be kept in mind in regard to the construction of a haybox cooker:
Insulation should cover an six sides of the box (especially the bottom and lid). If one or more sides are not insulated, heat will be lost by conduction through the uninsulated sides and much efficiency will be lost.
The box should be airtight. If it is not airtight, heat will be lost through warm air escaping by convection out of the box.
The inner surfaces of the box should be of a heat reflective material (such as aluminium foil) to reflect radiant heat from the pot back to it.
A simple, lightweight haybox can be made from a 60 by 120 cm sheet of rigid foil-faced insulation and aluminium tape. Haybox cookers can also be constructed as a box-in-a-box with the intervening space filled with any good insulating material. The required thickness of the insulation will vary with how efficient it is (see below).
Good Insulating Materials | Suggested Wall Thickness |
Cork | 5 cm |
Polystyrene sheets/pellets/drinking cups | 5 cm |
Hay/straw/rushes | 10 cm |
Sawdust/wood shavings | 10 cm |
Wool/fur | 10 cm |
Fiberglas/glass wool | 10 cm |
Shredded newspaper/cardboard | 10 cm |
Rice hulls/nut shells | 15 cm |
The inner box should have a reflective interior: aluminium foil, shiny aluminium sheeting, old printing plates, other polished sheet metal’ or silver paint will all work. The box can be wooden, or a can-in-a-can, or cardboard, or any combination; a pair of cloth bags might also work. Be inventive. Always be sure the lid is air tight.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
There are some adjustments involved in cooking with haybox cookers:
Less water should be used since it is not boiled away.
Less spicing is needed since the aroma is not boiled away.
Cooking must be started earlier to give the food enough time to cook at a lower temperature than over a stove.
Haybox cookers work best for large quantities (over 4 lifers) as small amounts of food have less thermal mass and cool faster than a larger quantity. Two or more smaller amounts of food may be placed in the box to cook simultaneously.
The food should boil for several minutes before being placed in the box. This ensures that all the food is at boiling temperature, not just the water.
The boxes perform best at low altitudes where boiling temperature is highest. They should not be expected to perform as well at high altitudes. One great advantage of haybox cookers is that the cook no longer has to keep up a fire or watch or stir the pot once it’s in the box. In fact, the box should not be opened during cooking as valuable heat is lost. And finally, food will never burn in a haybox.
Welcome to my thermal cooker thermo cooking web blog where I hope to collect and share information on the methods and functions of using slow cooking for what ever need you might have.
I plan on pulling information in on haybox cookers, vacuum flask cooking, thermos and wonderboxes that use the process of an insulated container to store the heat and cook the food we eat daily or in emergency situations. Along with the how to’s and what for’s and recipes for these non-electric slow cookers.
http://www.survivalblog.com/2007/12/time_and_energy_efficient_cook.html
I wish to share some valuable information on my personal experiences with the use of two cooking devices which I incorporate into daily homemaking practice when I am attempting to conserve on water and on fuel usage. Both of them are extremely time and energy efficient.
The two kitchen products which have earned their weight in silver in my home are my pressure cookers, and my newest kitchen toys, which come from an old Asian origin and cooking concept, the thermo cooker pot.
I have and use several sizes of pressure cookers. I chose the pot size for use for the job I’m performing based on the fill capacity of the product I am cooking in it. The pot capacity should never be over 2/3rds full. The food is liquid pressure cooked on the basis of requiring very little water or liquid and a minimal amount is lost and released as pressurized steam, thus it cooks evenly, thoroughly, and quickly. Time savings average about one half compared to the usual on the stove top methods. Fuel savings are dependant on the time required for the recipe. I use this method for large vegetable batches, and large cuts of meat, like roast cuts or several chickens and get a finished product that is tender to cut with a fork. My very large pressure pots are mostly used for canning purposes to put up jars of volume batches of seasonal produce, meats, and jellies. Using the pressure cookers overall cuts my actual cooking and canning time by one third, compared to using the open pot boil methods. When you are putting up hundreds of jars, this time efficiency becomes necessity. I have had a few mishaps however over the years. They were character building learning experiences of what not to cook in a pressure cooker. Beans, rice, and whole grain cereals need to be constantly monitored, as the small needle outlet from which the pressurized steam escapes becomes easily clogged, and when it does you have now created a bean bomb! If you’re like me and are multitasking in or out of the household, constant sitting to a pot is not time efficient or possible. I have discovered my next favorite device as a result of this need to cook my one pot meal favorite dishes and also to simultaneously free myself to leave to do other equally important jobs. This device allows me to leave the house and come home hours later to a safe, hot cooked meal.
The thermo cooker pot is actually two pots, one (the cooking pot) is inserted into a second thermo insulated pot and is sealed with a hermetic seal lid. The pots can be found in Asian market stores, online, and from high end kitchen and industrial supply houses and are sold by numerous makers. Some makers sell their pots to other distributors who stick their retail labels on them. More expensive in this case is not necessarily a better pot. Key points of its success for your needs are to consider the following issues when searching to procure one. The pot set needs to be constructed of excellent quality stainless steel in order to maintain heat conductivity and easily clean and withstand staining. The floor of the pot must be constructed of no less than two air-insulated layers. The inner pot’s volume size needs to be one that will compromise and accommodate the majority of food dishes you normally prepare, if you desire to own just one size. Think in volumes of servings somewhere between how much soup, stew, arroz con pollo [rice and chicken], or how much hot grain cereal you make in one batch. Waste is non productive and expensive ultimately in time and money. Thermo cooker pots work on the principals of applying fast radiant energy cooking to your prepared dish by using the inner cooking pot on the stovetop. The recipe chosen must be able to be brought up to and kept to a boiling temperature for at least 5 minutes, the longer you can boil it the better. Secondly, this inner pot is covered and then immediately placed inside the slightly larger external thermo chamber pot, it is tightly sealed, and taken off the radiant source to finish the cooking process over the next hour on its own kinetic heat requiring no external fuel source. I leave mine in the warmest location in the house. The food contained inside the thermo chamber continues to cook by conductant heat for the next hour or so at a heat temperature gradient loss of kinetic energy which gradually decreases over 6 hours of time and maintains itself at a warming temperature up to 8 hours. The food will then remain warm to +/- 160 degrees up to 8 hours, this being dependant on normal external ambient room temperatures. I have tested my unit with a thermometer after 8 hours, and it made the grade in 65 degree ambient room temperature. This can be a boon to use in fuel and time conservation modes during TEOTWAWKI. It can also be used inversely chill perishable foods safely for consumption for 6 to 8 hours. Think summer mayonaise and egg based salads or cool fruit salads or transporting fresh farm pot cheeses without ice.
I have now mastered my pots usage to include making yogurt, soft goat cheeses and tofu successfully by not boiling the milk or soybean curd but by bringing it slowly up to incubation temp for the culture I am using, and then using the thermo pot to finish the process of maintaining the heat source. In the past I used an old wide mouth thermos bottle to do this method but it did not hold enough volume for my family’s consumption or barter needs. We also now wake up to fresh hot maple wheat berry cereal in the morning by preparing this before retiring for the night. I have used the thermo pot now on different stove and fuel sources, including wood burning and get pretty consistent result. I have used it even away from home to travel and on hunting trips using the butane camp stove. I have boiled the recipes required water, and dumped in our packaged dehydrated camp food, to either wake up to warm eggs and sausage or to come back from the hunt to eat a great hot meal.
I hope this info will help all the cookies create more efficiency in their survival preparations and also to help them find more enjoyment time to read JWR’s great postings and books!
Have a blessed and bountiful New Year!
http://www.talkingleaves.org/node/142
“Revolutionary Kitchen Device Guarantees
If the above were an actual ad, it would likely provoke a few questions:
(1) Is this just a lot of hype, a quick-sell con job?
(The answer is, fortunately, no. This essential kitchen device is not a fraudulent marketing ploy but an easy-to-build item, and it actually performs as described.)
(2) If such a device exists, why doesn’t everyone have one?
(I don’t know. Everyone should have one. We live in a commercial culture where do-it-yourself ecological practices are not promoted because they don’t make anyone a fast buck or increase the GNP. More education is necessary.)
(3) How can my household or community get one?
(It’s easy: make it yourself.)
The device I’ve described is a haybox, also known as a retained-heat cooker, insulated cooker, or wonder box. Of all the sustainable technologies I’ve encountered in my years of living in community, it’s the one that is the most universally applicable and appropriate. In short, every community and household should have one–or ideally, more than one. We at Lost Valley Educational Center have five; Aprovecho Research Center (which has led the way in educating about them) has at least half a dozen; other intentional communities, urban cooperatives, co-housing and activist groups are discovering them; and some eco-pioneers are even whispering about installing hayboxes in the White House once it is recaptured from its current occupiers in 2004. Good for people, good for the earth, and good for our country, hayboxes are the essence of patriotism. In fact, only terrorists wouldn’t like them.
Hayboxes work on the simple principle that if the heat applied to food in the cooking process can be retained within that food, rather than lost to the environment, no “replacement heat” is needed to keep the food cooking. In conventional cooking, any heat applied to a pot after food reaches boiling temperatures is merely replacing heat lost to the air by the pot. In haybox cooking, food is brought to a boil on the stove, simmered for a few minutes (5 minutes for rice or other grains, 15 minutes for large dry beans or whole potatoes), then put into an insulated box, where it completes its cooking. Food will be ready in anywhere from one to one-and-a-half times the “normal” completion time, with no tending needed and no danger of burning, and will stay piping hot for many hours, allowing maximum flexibility in the cook’s and the eaters’ schedules. For grains or beans, water is reduced by one-quarter, because water is retained within the food rather than simmered away into the air (it’s important to use pots with tight-fitting lids in haybox cooking). The larger the quantity cooked, the more effective this technique is (the hotter the food will stay, for longer), because increased thermal mass holds more heat. And because most of the cooking occurs in the 180 degrees F-212 degrees F range, rather than at a constant 212 degrees , more flavor and nutrients are preserved.
As in conventional cooking, presoaking and draining beans makes them easier to cook and to digest. A few particularly long-cooking foods, such as garbanzo beans, may need reboiling part-way through the cooking process. For health reasons, meat dishes should always be reboiled before serving–but all other foods should be safe to eat straight out of the haybox. (However, don’t put a partially-eaten pot of lukewarm food back into the haybox without first reheating it, since hayboxes are not only excellent cookers but also ideal incubation chambers for yogurt and other bacteria-rich food.)
Hayboxes are easy to construct through a variety of methods. The haybox itself is any kind of insulated container that can withstand cooking temperatures and fits relatively snugly around the pot. Effective insulation materials include hay, straw, wool, feathers, cotton, rice hulls, cardboard, aluminum foil, newspaper, fiberglass, fur, rigid foam, and others. The insulation is placed between the rigid walls of a box, within a double bag of material, or lining a hole in the ground. Campers have created “instant hayboxes” by wrapping a sleeping bag, blankets, and/or pillows around a pot. The most effective insulating materials create many separate pockets of air, which slow down the movement of heat. Two to four inches of thickness, depending on the material, are necessary for good insulation. Some materials, such as aluminum foil or mylar, actually reflect heat back toward the pot.
Any material used must withstand temperatures up to 212 degrees F without melting (exposed styrofoam won’t work), and without releasing toxic fumes or dangerous fibers (rigid foam and fiberglass both need to be covered). The insulation also must be dry, and be kept dry (an inner layer of aluminum foil or mylar can help prevent cooking moisture from entering the wall of the box). The box should be as snug-fitting as possible around the pot, with a tight seal so that heat does not escape from the cooking cavity. Build your haybox to fit your largest pot; for smaller pots in the same box, you can increase performance by wrapping towels, blankets, or pillows around the pot.
Hayboxes used on a regular basis or in a group setting need to be durable: I’d recommend constructing a wooden box, with a “hat” type lid (so that the opening is at the bottom, to minimize heat loss). Attach handles to make lifting this upper section easier, and line the inner walls with mylar if possible (it can be salvaged from used food storage containers, balloons, etc.). If you can’t find mylar, be prepared to replace your aluminum foil lining periodically. Depending on where you are using the haybox, you may want to attach casters to the bottom of your base. Find a good place to store and use your haybox, within or easily accessible to the kitchen.
One final guarantee: once you’re a haybox devotee, you will never willingly go back to conventional methods of preparing pots of grains, beans, or long-cooking soups again, especially if you’re feeding a group. Happy cooking!
A different version of this article first appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of Communities: Journal of Cooperative Living (see www.ic.org).
For further information, contact Aprovecho Research Center, 80574 Hazelton Rd., Cottage Grove, OR 97424, (541) 942-8198, apro@efn.org, www.efn.org/~apro.
Chris Roth is a haybox devotee living at Lost Valley Educational Center.
©2003 Talking Leaves
Spring 2003
Volume 13, Number 1
Communication & Eco-Culture
http://www.lostvalley.org/haybox1.html
Hayboxes
Haybox cooking (also called retained-heat cooking) is an age-old method that can be used to conserve energy not only during times of crisis, but anytime. Depending on the food item and amount cooked, the use of a haybox or insulated cooker saves between 20% and 80% of the energy normally needed to cook a food. The longer an item usually takes on a stovetop, the more fuel is saved. For example, with a haybox, five pots of long-cooking dry beans will use the same amount of fuel to cook to completion as just one pot cooked without a haybox.
The principle of retained-heat cooking is simple. In conventional cooking, any heat applied to the pot after it reaches boiling temperature is merely replacing heat lost to the air by the pot. In haybox cooking, food is brought to a boil, simmered for a few minutes depending on the particle size (5 minutes for rice or other grains, 15 minutes for large dry beans or whole potatoes), then put into the haybox to continue cooking. Since the insulated cooker prevents most of the heat in the food from escaping into the environment, no additional energy is needed to complete the cooking process. The hayboxed food normally cooks within one to two times the normal stovetop cooking time. It can be left in the haybox until ready to serve, and stays hot for hours. “Timing” is much less important than in stovetop cooking: stick a pot of rice, beans, or stew in at lunch time, and it will be ready when you are, and steaming hot, at dinner time.
The haybox itself is any kind of insulated container that can withstand cooking temperatures and fits relatively snugly around the pot. Hayboxes have been made using hay, straw, wool, feathers, cotton, rice hulls, cardboard, aluminum foil, newspaper, fiberglass, fur, rigid foam, and/or other suitable materials as insulation. The insulation is placed between the rigid walls of a box, within a double bag of material, or lining a hole in the ground. “Instant hayboxes” have been created by wrapping a sleeping bag, blankets, and/or pillows around a pot. The most effective insulating materials create many separate pockets of air, which slow down the movement of heat. 2 to 4 inches of thickness (depending on the material) are necessary for good insulation. Some materials, such as aluminum foil or mylar, actually reflect heat back toward the pot. Important characteristics of any insulating material incorporated into a haybox include:
Cooking containers, too, should have tight-fitting lids, to prevent the escape of heat and moisture.
Since water is not lost in haybox cooking the way it is during extended stovetop simmering, the amount of water used to cook grains and beans is normally reduced by one-quarter. Instead of adding 2 cups of water per cup of dry rice, try adding 1 1/2. Also, the larger the amount cooked, the more effective haybox cooking is, since a full pot has more mass and therefore more heat storage capacity than a half-full pot. Haybox cooking is ideally suited for a family or large group, or anytime there’s a reason to cook in quantity. If you’re cooking alone, try cooking full pots of food using a haybox, then reheating small portions for individual meals–this too can conserve fuel.Retained-heat cooking has many other advantages in addition to energy and water conservation. As mentioned, it makes “timing” less critical, since it keeps meals hot until serving time. Once the initial boil-and-short-simmer stage is past, it also eliminates the danger of burning the food on the bottom of the pot (the sad fate of too many pots of grains, beans, or other foods left simmering too long without stirring on the stove). Hayboxed food can actually be better for you, and tastier, than food prepared exclusively on a stovetop, because most of the cooking takes place in the 180 degrees F to 212 degrees F range, rather than at a constant 212 degrees F (lower temperatures preserve more flavor and nutrients, as they also do in crockpot cooking and solar cooking).
If you want to prepare multiple items for a meal but have only a limited number of flame sources, hayboxes can also greatly facilitate the logistics of food preparation. For example, you can bring your beans to a boil, simmer them 15 minutes, put them in a haybox; then bring your rice to a boil, simmer it 5 minutes, put it in another haybox; then prepare your vegetable stir-fry or soup, etc. At the end, you’ll have a uniformly hot, unburnt, multi-dish meal, all off a single flame, probably consuming less total fuel than you would have used simply to cook the longest-cooking item alone without a haybox. You’ll also have used one-quarter less of your drinkable water supply in preparing the food.
Presoaking and draining beans always makes them easier to cook, as well as to digest. A few particularly long-cooking foods, such as garbanzo beans, may need reboiling part-way through the cooking process. For health reasons, meat dishes should always be reboiled before serving.
Hayboxes are second only to solar cookers (which, however, are dependent on sunshine) in their potential to conserve resources. They’re easy to build, easy to use, and have many other advantages. Y2K or no Y2K, they deserve a place in every home.
http://solarcooking.org/heat-retention/ret-heat.htm
Once food is heated to boiling, cooking can continue in an insulated box
Daily cooking [on a stove or over a fire] frequently includes a long simmering period which is required for many beans, grains, stews, and soups. The amount of fuel needed to complete these cooking processes can be greatly reduced by cooking with retained heat. Even today, in some parts of the world, a pit is dug and lined with rocks previously heated in a fire. The food to be cooked is placed in the lined pit, often covered with leaves. Then the whole thing is covered with a mound of earth. The heat from the rocks cannot [easily] escape and the food is cooked very slowly.
Another version of this method consists of digging a pit and lining it with hay or another good insulating material. A pot of food which has previously been heated up to a boil is placed in the pit, covered with more hay and earth, and allowed to cook slowly with the retained heat.
This latter method is the direct ancestor of the “Haybox Cooker,” which is simply a well-insulated box or basket lined with a reflective material into which a pot of food previously brought to a boil is placed. The insulation greatly slows the loss of conductive heat, and the shiny lining reflects the radiant heat back into the pot. This works best when the pot fits snugly into the insulation with no air in between.
Such a box or basket can easily be made of inexpensive, locally available materials. It can be wooden, or cardboard, or any combination. Hay, straw, rushes, feathers, sawdust, rags, wool, shredded paper, etc. are all good insulating materials.
Principles to be kept in mind are these:
There are some adjustments involved in cooking with haybox cookers:
(This above portion of this article was excerpted from Cooking with the Sun, State Technical College, Altötting, Neuötting Str. 64 c, 84503, Altötting, Germany)