More economical cooking

Food is an energy-intensive game, whether we are talking about industrial production and processing or cooking at home. Or, of course, intermediate stages such as a professional production kitchen. It’s worth taking a look at our kitchen energy consumption and how we can reduce it.
And not so much in the kitchen itself, because a lot has already been written about that and often not very practical advice (replace all equipment with energy-efficient, great advice, but with what money?), but about the cooking process itself.

1. The most basic thing — a cover.
   Covering pots can reduce by 30% the energy needed to bring the contents to a boil, and the cooking process itself is also faster. Although of course — let’s not go crazy and, as in everything, keep balance and common sense. Cooking chickpeas covered can end up flooding the whole stove.
2. As much as needed and not a bit more.
   Water, which everyone has already forgotten about (or wasn’t in that class), has a high specific heat capacity. Which means it takes a lot of energy to heat it. Water for coffee, for pasta, for anything — cook only as much as we need and nothing more.
3. The pot should match the “burner.”
   Very bad, worst when it’s smaller, because a lot of heat then escapes from the sides. The pot should also be clean. The more dirt, soot, etc., on the bottom, the worse the heat conduction. Regularly clean the kettle and cooking vessels from “scale,” i.e., deposits of calcium and magnesium carbonates that precipitate during boiling water. The simplest way is to add vinegar to the water, bring it to a boil, and leave it to cool. And then wash several times, boil water, to get rid of the vinegar smell.
4. Don’t waste food.
   When you pour cooked soup down the toilet, you are also throwing away the energy used to cook it. And leftovers, e.g., cooked potatoes, are a great ingredient for a leftover dish, e.g., a salad (on the FB page I recently posted examples of such leftover salads).

And this leads us to the next point, which is:

5. Cold kitchen.
Sandwiches can also be a tasty and varied dish. As well as, for example, aspic, various spreads, and salads. When planning a menu, it’s worth considering how much energy we need to prepare a dish.
Also pasta and vegetables al dente, or only blanched, etc., need less electricity or gas. Similarly, ingredients — they have different cooking times. Beans cook longer (pro tip: add baking soda like for chickpeas, it will be faster) than lentils, sweet potato than potato

6. Serve immediately.
Batch cooking is an excellent solution, making life easier, and I’m a big supporter of it, but if I cook a pot of soup for three days, then each following day I will need energy to reheat it.
It’s good to prepare meals (especially for the whole family) so that everyone sits down to eat at the same time, right after preparation, to avoid reheating. However, if we have cooked a larger amount of something, remember that we don’t need to reheat the whole thing every time, only as much as we will eat.