You may know your way around the kitchen, but do you also know how to save energy while preparing your favorite meals? Saving energy in the kitchen is easy when you adjust how you use your kitchen appliances and cookware.
Take advantage of energy-saving appliances and techniques. To be more energy efficient while using your oven or stove, follow these energy-saving tips.
Using Your Appliances Efficiently
Open the refrigerator or oven door only when absolutely necessary. Opening the refrigerator door lets the cold air out, forcing the refrigerator’s motor to run more. Also, opening the oven door while you’re cooking lets the heat out, wasting energy.
Try to take out everything you need from the refrigerator at once.
Thaw frozen foods in the refrigerator. Putting frozen items in the refrigerator to thaw is safer than thawing them on the counter. In addition, thawing foods like meat or casseroles all the way will reduce their cooking time once you’re ready to start.
Match the size of the pot to the stove top element. If you’re only using a small saucepan to cook with, put it on the smallest burner. Using a larger burner will allow heat to escape into the room, and does not cook your food any faster.
Optimize your preheated oven by cooking several items in a row. This can be especially helpful around the holidays or if you enjoy baking large batches of pies or cookies. You can also turn off the oven before the end of the specified cooking time; the residual heat will continue to cook the food for several minutes.
Try cooking several days’ food at once, then freeze about half of what you make.
Use a lid when boiling a pot of water. It’ll boil faster that way, and keep steam heat from escaping into your kitchen. If you boil water every day, an electric kettle can save time and energy because they heat up very quickly.
Try one-pot cooking. For speed and convenience, many people try cooking meals where all the ingredients can be cooked together in one pot. Soups, pasta dishes, and rice-based dishes are great examples of recipes that can be made using only one pot.[6] This may require cooking in stages, i.e., browning the meat, boiling the pasta, and then finally combining all ingredients in the pot to finish the cooking together.
For instance, make stew with meat, potatoes, and vegetables in one large pot.
Put soups and stews on simmer. Once your pot has reached the boiling point, turning the heat down will save energy by allowing the heat trapped inside the pot to do most of the cooking.
Leaving your soup to boil increases the possibility of scorching food at the bottom of the pot, so lowering the heat can have more than one benefit.
Use a charcoal grill outdoors. Cooking outdoors is a great summer pastime, but you can grill year-round if the weather permits. Cooking over an open fire or charcoal grill won’t add a dime to your energy bills, and you can cook large amounts of food for use throughout the week.
Purchasing Smaller Appliances
Purchase a toaster oven or microwave. These smaller appliances use less energy overall, and are often faster than cooking in the oven or on the stovetop. Many prepackaged foods come with toaster oven or microwave directions, making it easy and quick to learn how best to use your new tools. Choose a microwave based on your needs.
Use an electric pressure cooker. If you want maximum efficiency, purchase a pressure cooker. An electric pressure cooker is a countertop appliance that takes up very little space, and your foods will cook in about 1/3 of the time of using the oven or stovetop. Depending on the size of your pressure cooker, you can make large batches of soups or stews that will last for several meals.
Build a solar oven. Solar ovens are small, portable, and easy to build. Using a solar oven can be a fun daytime activity to do with the kids, and using the heat of the sun is free. Materials are inexpensive and your solar oven can be used repeatedly.
Saving Money by Being Vigilant
Clean your stovetop after every use. The cleaner the cooking surface, the more efficiently it can transfer heat to the food. To lower overall cooking times and keep those utility bills low, make sure your stovetop burners and oven are clean and free of grease or burned-on foods.
Call in a professional for advice. If you notice that your appliances are not working as efficiently as they could, call in a professional. For example, if your oven door or refrigerator door doesn’t close properly, it may be an easy fix. A professional repairman may be able to show you ways to save money on repairs or tell you if it’s time to replace an item.
Contact the store where you purchased your appliances. They may have a repairman available to help you.
Note the brand and model number of your appliance before calling the repairman. This information can be found in the manual that came with the appliance, or on the appliance itself. If you can’t find this information, tell the repairman that you don’t know.
Describe the problem as clearly and simply as you can.
If your appliance is truly broken and needs to be discarded, you can ask the repairman about how to dispose of it and how/where to replace it.