Buying a new, energy-efficient stove isn't the only way to use less energy in the kitchen: improving your cooking habits is the best way to conserve energy. Understanding the best ways to heat and cool food makes an enormous difference, and the habits outlined here are simple to do!
What You Should Know
- The average American household bakes with an oven 185 times a year.
- Electric ovens have to heat up approximately 35 pounds of steel and four cubic feet of air before they can start cooking the food. In fact, the food absorbs only about 6% of the total heat produced by an oven!
- A pressure cooker cooks food 10 times faster and uses up to 75% less energy than a conventional oven.
- Natural gas ovens (with electric ignitions, not pilot lights) are almost twice as efficient as electric ovens because they use their fuel directly to cook the food. The downside is that natural gas fumes are combustible and therefore must be ventilated to the outside, which also takes energy.
- An oven with a convection setting has an internal fan that circulates the hot air while baking, allowing the food to cook much faster and therefore saving energy. It also costs 30% less to operate than a regular electric oven over its lifetime, despite its higher price tag.
- A microwave is approximately 75% more energy efficient than an electric oven. By increasing your use of the microwave for reheating, defrosting, browning, and cooking vegetables an dpopcorn, you can cut your total cooking costs by over 20%.
- A toaster oven uses two-thirds less energy than a conventional electric oven.
- If every oven owner in America peeked at her or his dinner cooking in the oven one fewer time a year, we would prevent nearly 7,000 TONS of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere - every year.
Easy Things You Can Do
- Cook with the smallest appliance that can do the job: As a general rule, smaller appliances use less energy than larger appliances. Try always to use a pressure cooker, Crock-Pot, toaster oven, microwave, or stove (in that order) before resorting to an oven--especially if you're cooking smaller meals
- Size your pan to the burner: Always match the size of the pan you're cooking with to the size of the burner, to prevent heat loss into the surrounding air.
- Use glass or ceramic pans in the oven instead of metal ones. They hold heat better. This means you can turn down the temperature about 25°F and the food will cook just as quickly.
- Don't peek during cooking: Every time you open your oven door to check on food, or lift a lid off a pot on the stove, as much as 25% of the heat escapes. Use an oven light, timer, and meat thermometer to monitor your food instead. On the stove, a lid on the pan will reduce cooking time by 65%. Try to use pots with clear glass lids so you can watch the food while it cooks.
- Watch water boil: Once water (or any liquid) begins to boil, it won't get any hotter. Turn down your stove's burner a bit once boiling has begun--you'll maintain the boil and save some energy.
- Play with knives: Cut up your food into smaller pieces before cooking--it will cook up to twice as fast.
- Thaw it right: If you can, thaw your frozen food in the refrigerator a day ahead of when you need it. This will give your fridge a break since the frozen food will help to cool the other food in the fridge.
- Cover liquids and wrap foods in your fridge, since uncovered liquids and foods release moisture, making it harder for your fridge to cool down. Also, wrap foods with aluminum foil or plastic wrap instead of wax paper. Paper acts as an insulator, so it keeps food warm longer.
- Keep it cool: When you're having company over, fill a cooler or bucket with ice so your guests don't have to keep opening and closing the freezer. In the summertime, fill a pitcher with tap water and keep it in the fridge so you don't have to let the tap water run while you wait for it to get cold.
Source: 51 Easy Ways You Can Prevent Global Warming (and save money!), by Jeffrey Langholz, Ph.D., and Kelly Turner