Bitter Ashes
13th October 2010, 15:43
This is a cracking little invention I've stumbled across that's dead easy to make and will save you a fortune. It also makes your food extra tender.
You will need:
- A large container, such as a shopping basket or box around the same size
- Insulating material. Traditionaly, hay is used, but that expanded polystyrene you get packing your freezer works even better!
- A sharp knife
All you do is cut the polystyrene to line the sides of your container and make a roof on the top. You could just pack it with hay from the rabbit's hutch too if you wanted, but this works better and it's a good use for an otherwise enviromentaly damaging material.
Now what you do with it is simple. You bring whatever it is you're cooking on the hob up to boil and then take it off the hob and put the pan in your haybox, put the lid on top and it will continue to cook for hours! As a general rule, you cook three times longer in the box than you would simmering on the hob.
This can easily save you an hour's worth of gas off each meal for a stew and you can even deep fat fry with it (but please be very careful when moving hot oil around). The savings rack up very quickly, unless you're one of those people who live off instant noodles and baked potatoes. Noodles can be cooked in the haybox too btw.
You're also making use of packing material which would otherwise be not-rotting on a landfill and reducing your carbon footprint by using less fuel.
As a final brucie bonus, because the food is cooked so slowly, it tenderises it beautifully. I know a lot of people are veggies and vegans, but for those of us who are not, being able to turn even the cheapest, toughest joints into something that falls apart in your mouth is certainly an attractive incentive.
It's not a pipe dream. It works now and you can easily incorporate a haybox into your life. With this in mind I'm going to put this in the sticky too. :)
You will need:
- A large container, such as a shopping basket or box around the same size
- Insulating material. Traditionaly, hay is used, but that expanded polystyrene you get packing your freezer works even better!
- A sharp knife
All you do is cut the polystyrene to line the sides of your container and make a roof on the top. You could just pack it with hay from the rabbit's hutch too if you wanted, but this works better and it's a good use for an otherwise enviromentaly damaging material.
Now what you do with it is simple. You bring whatever it is you're cooking on the hob up to boil and then take it off the hob and put the pan in your haybox, put the lid on top and it will continue to cook for hours! As a general rule, you cook three times longer in the box than you would simmering on the hob.
This can easily save you an hour's worth of gas off each meal for a stew and you can even deep fat fry with it (but please be very careful when moving hot oil around). The savings rack up very quickly, unless you're one of those people who live off instant noodles and baked potatoes. Noodles can be cooked in the haybox too btw.
You're also making use of packing material which would otherwise be not-rotting on a landfill and reducing your carbon footprint by using less fuel.
As a final brucie bonus, because the food is cooked so slowly, it tenderises it beautifully. I know a lot of people are veggies and vegans, but for those of us who are not, being able to turn even the cheapest, toughest joints into something that falls apart in your mouth is certainly an attractive incentive.
It's not a pipe dream. It works now and you can easily incorporate a haybox into your life. With this in mind I'm going to put this in the sticky too. :)