OVER THE LONG EASTER weekend I’m sure that our stoves saw quite a bit of action.
Whether four- or six-burners, no doubt they were packed with steaming pots with the oven going full blast below. I think most will agree that “sweating over a hot stove”, although we dread it, has its rewards.
There likely aren’t too many cultures that don’t rely on long and slow-cooked foods, baked, boiled, steamed, roasted, stewed, grilled.
Hand in hand with long and slow cooking comes the economic repercussion, these days we all know it first hand, fuel is expensive.
Some of us use, LPG or bottled gas, others have access to piped natural gas, and without a doubt far too many rely on electricity to power their cooking. Natural gas is by far the most affordable option, but not one that is available to all.
Americans love their slow cookers, more commonly called crockpots, they amount to a lidded piece of crockery that is comprised of a double wall with an internal heating element. The shortfall, of course, being, that you have to leave it plugged in for hours on end.
I must admit I have one, but the thought of leaving it plugged in all day, for nearly 12 hours sends my head spinning.
Electricity is just too expensive, and money is just too tight to leave anything plugged in that long.
We all know that the stove is a modern convenience of which our interaction with it is far detached from the fuel that is necessary to keep the thing running.
Our ancestors weren’t the beneficiaries of modern conveniences as we know them. Wood to fuel the flames of cooking was not limitless, nor was it without the hard labour required to get it under the pot. Much of today’s developing world still relies on fuel that is either expensive beyond its means or labour intensive to gather.
Recently I’ve been reading about an initiative – actually sort of a resurrection of an old stand-by technique – called the Wonderbag.
The Wonderbag is a riff on the good old hay box. The principle of the hay box, popularly used in the 19th century and early 20th, was that a pot of food was rapidly brought to the boiling point and transferred to an insulated box, typically containing its namesake hay or paper.
The insulating properties of the hay retained the heat generated by traditional cooking methods without the expenditure of additional fuel over the cooking process.
The Wonderbag replaces hay with recycled polystyrene pellets, and resembles a poofy cushion, using a double wall fabric construction. The polystyrene pellets act to insulate the pot placed inside. A drawstring and insulated lid act to keep the whole thing cosy.
It works with stews, roasts, breakfast porridges, rice – you name it. Bring the food to a boil, transfer it to the bag, and retain the heat to complete the cooking. Pure genius!
So far 150 000 Wonderbags are in use in South Africa alone.
I’m not suggesting that we abandon our beloved stoves altogether, but there’s something to think about.
Each and every day we go through thousands of polystyrene food containers that go directly to the landfill. Every day we fire up our stoves.
The Wonderbag concept has me curious. If we committed to cooking rice this way, imagine the potential impact on our fuel bill. It’s definitely worth considering.
