Saving Money on Cooking/Heating Things.

[Judi Dial]

I'm interested in whatever others do that's like these? What do you do to save money when cooking or heating things?

When cooking rice (not converted, the old fashioned kind) you can heat the liquid to boiling, add the rice, boil for 5 minutes, put a lid on it, and turn off the stove. It will cook by itself.

Make meals where you use one oven temperature/time for everything. One of my favorite cooking booklets is by the Mohawk Power people and has menus like this. I also believe the New Better Homes & Gardens Cookbooks had some of these too?

If you're steaming vegetables in a double boiler, boil an egg in the water at the same time. Or, if you're not interested in doing that, use the hot water for tea, washing dishes, cleaning a counter, whatever.

If you're baking bread, throw a potato or two in on the bottom rack, you'll get baked potatoes for potato salad or stuffed skins, or.... btw, that's the only time I oven bake potatoes, mostly I scrub 'em, take the eyes/faults off and nuke 'em in the microwave. I do this for baked potatoes and mashed.

We didn't have a hot water heater for a while, and I learned how to wash/rinse dishes with the least amount of hot water. I still use this when we lose power, once or twice a year here in rural NH.

Fill a stew pot with water, set it on a med high burner to heat. While it's heating, rinse in cold water all the food off the dishes. Discard that water, then wash all the dishes with cold water by using a soapy sponge and adding water as needed. Stack the soapy dishes on the counters (can be dirty, but not gross). By now the water should have boiled.

Put the hot water into a clean plastic dish pan. Using tongs, your fingers, etc. dip the dishes into the hot water, pull them out and put them on the dish drainer. Repeat until all the dishes are done. If you need to do a second batch of dishes, use the soapy, tepid water to wash the new batch of dishes with the first time. The soapy water on your counters can be used to clean up your counters, no extra hot water or soap is usually necessary. If i know I'm only doing one dish drainer load, I'll dip the dishes directly in the stew pot, then pour the soapy water into the dish pan for whatever other cleaning I need to do.

Judi

[Spirit Deer]

Good tips.

It's just the two of us, so we use the toaster oven a lot, rather than heating up the big oven in the propane stove. Electricity is much cheaper than propane around here lately.

[rainbowgc]

We bought the microwave that also bakes, that helps a lot since there are only the 2 of us much of our baking takes place in an oven that is smaller and cooks faster.

[jonesies]

I bake potatoes in the crockpot, then freeze the leftover baked potatoes whole for later use.

Make double batches of pasta and freeze half so I don't have to heat up the stove again.

[shoiji]

I use the microwave to cook, especially in the summer since the stove and oven are electric.

Am also a big fan of steaming.

[Grainlady]

We have a Sharp Convection/Microwave oven that is a big energy saver. I do most of my baking in a fraction of the time. I can even bake 2 loaves of bread in 25-minutes and NO preheating. With the racks, I can stack things, like cookies. I bake them on 12-inch pizza pans, so I can bake more of them than in my regular oven in half the time. Whole meals can be stacked and baked.

I also do a lot of cooking/baking in 2 solar ovens. They take a little getting used to, and you need to move them periodically to follow the sun, but you can't beat the price of the utilities - FREE! I can bake bread in them, or use them like a slow cooker.

With my 35-year old Saladmaster Stainless Steel Cookware, I can stack foods in different pans and cook several things all at once. I can cook a whole meal, including a cake, all on one burner at VERY low heat. I guess it was pre-Crock Pot, but does the same thing, only with more pans stacked.

Anyone else do Thermos "cooking"? I cook oatmeal, rice, and things like black beans in a thermos. All you need is boiling water and an overnight soak. Occasionally I'll need to add more boiling water to beans and "cook" them a little longer, but it's still less expensive than cooking them on the stove.

When potatoes are buy one bag, get the second bag free, I'll cook up all the potatoes and make them into freezer mashed potatoes.

FREEZER MASHED POTATOES:
5# potatoes (washed, peeled if you like), cooked as you normally would for mashed potatoes.

Drain. Mash, adding 6 oz. cream cheese, 1 c. sour cream and 1/4 c. butter (I substitute homemade kefir cheese for the sour cream). I quick freeze them in dollops using an ice cream scoop, then vacuum-seal them in a FoodSaver bag. Or you can put them in user-friendly size portions in plastic containers. I only make mashed potatoes a few times a year using this method.

I'm another water miser. We heat our dishwashing water in an electric kettle (5-cups hot water plus 5-cups cold water) and do dishes and clean-up in about 1-gallon of water total. We use a small plastic tote, rather than filling the sink with 5-7-gallons of water.

I use quick-cooking techniques when possible, so we eat stir-fry at least once a week, as a good example of an energy-saving quick method of cooking.

[sabrelvssammy]

i have a rice/veggie steamer $29.... it has multiple trays for steaming at once but i usually only use the bottom one....i fire that thing up and start steaming everything (brn rice takes 1 hr) and then steam a bunch of different veggies in a row and keep them in containers in the fridge all week to eat on...not only do i get all the wonderful food but the steamer shoots hot steam out a release hole and it puts moisture in the air.... (i have actually put my face over it and gotten a 'mini' facial before (but it's really hot...) so see its multi-functional too....

[Judi Dial]

Grainlady, I'd never heard of Saladmaster, thanks! Your post reminded me, I bought a divided Swan pot from a British antique store not too long ago. This is 4 wedge shaped pots that fit on a single burner. I haven't used it much, often I only cook a main course and 1 veggie with salad as there's only 2 of us.

I DID use the Swan pot when we had the power outage. Trying to heat enough hot water to clean with as well as cook took up all the burners on my stove!