It’s funny, but when we were living mostly on the grid with only the lights and fridge running through a 12v solar/battery set up, we passed on a lot of our electric appliances to friends to reduce our electricity usage. We did this especially with the appliances which used electricity to generate heat for cooking and replaced them with a number alternatives such as the solar oven, rocket stove, wood heater (with cooktop and oven), stored heat cooker and the gas stove. Now, while we still use those alternatives, we are producing more solar electricity than we use in summer and I was looking for ways to take advantage of some of this excess.
But I also wanted more!
I wanted appliances that would reduce our need to burn gas for cooking, thus reducing costs and greenhouse gas emissions (the electricity being solely produced by the sun. I also wanted appliances which were versatile and could be used to produce a number of different types of dishes. They should not be too expensive (OK no 3 is a bit pricey but it makes sense when you think about it) and they should not be too power hungry so that the batteries would not be swearing at me when I turned them on. Again, no 3 is a bit different but it is controllable. This is what I have come up with:
1. Rice Cooker
Addesso brand (Model No CFXB22G) 5 cup rice cooker rated at 400 watts
Rice cookers are remarkably convenient, once you set them up and turn them on they will run until the rice is cooked and then switch automatically from “cook” to “warm” keeping your cooked rice or whatever warm until you want to serve it. They are also wonderfully versatile! We started out just cooking rice, but then moved on to our own recipe for rice and beans which also contains diced veg, which we serve with a curry sauce.
Obviously the rice cooker was designed to provide well cooked rice every time and riced based dishes such as vegetable biryani, chicken rice, risotto, rice salad, Asian style paella and various fried rices, will all come out well cooked each time. However, you can cook lots of recipes that are not primarily rice as well. These include –
- pasta dishes and noodle dishes
- Beef, chicken, pork or seafood recipes (any number of curry recipes exist for these proteins)
- Legume dishes like lentil soup or chick pea curry
- Egg dishes including curries, omelettes and even scrambled eggs
- Plain or spiced vegetable dishes like steamed veg or vegetable curry.
The rice cooker does not use lots of power, well within the demands of our system, and it generally takes only 10 to 15 minutes for riced based dishes but can take longer for other styles of rice cooker cooking!
2. Slow cooker (AKA crockpot)
Russell Hobbs brand (Model 4443BSS) 3.5 litres, rated at 160 watts
While I am a fan of stored heat cookers, there is an undeniable charm around the set and forget cooking style of a slow cooker. We have enjoyed making a number of dishes generally around wet cooking ie soups, stews, and casserole type of stuff. A favourite is a wonderful freezable vegetarian dish based around legumes such as red kidney beans, black beans and chick peas, veg such as corn and Mexican type spices. I make it and then after eating it one day, freezing the rest for ready meals. We found the recipe on Tasty.com but there are lots of cookbooks out there. We are moving towards a vegetarian diet but the humble slow cooker is renowned for its superpower of making cheap cuts of meat tender.
It is only recently that I have become aware that slow cookers can do other things than the standard soups, stews and casseroles. They can, in fact, be used to bake bread, make yoghurt, cook porridge, as well as making cakes, sauces and desserts. They are a remarkably versatile device, which will enable you to get the most out of your solar electricity a while preparing delicious meals.
3. Induction Hot Plate (Portable)
Philips brand (Model HD 4992) Rated at 2100 watts
This hot plate is considerably more expensive and certainly uses lots more power than the previous two appliances – but!
It has been a recent acquisition for us because up until recently I saw the power consumption and thought “my poor batteries” and didn’t bother. However I saw one operating at a friend’s house and realised that you can turn them down!
Induction cookers have a number of things in their favour, and one is very efficient conversion of electrical energy to heat. The hotplate does not heat up itself, but induces a current in the conductive bottom of the cooking pot so that up to 90% of its heat is transferred to the pot versus 35% to 40% for gas. It can boil our kettle for tea or coffee in 3 minutes flat! I wanted it also so I could take advantage of the long summer days when preserving tomatoes and tomato sauce to boil water for processing the jars without going through a stack of gas.
It is not all beer and skittles however. The cooktop does need a cooking pot with a magnetic bottom (you can test using a magnet) or it will not work. Also, while it excels in boiling water, cooking wet stuff and steaming our veg, it has taken some getting used to for frying, and it does have a tendency to burn if not monitored well. Some things (like my world famous veggie patties) I still need the constant low heat of the gas on low to get right.
They can be very cheap (around $50), but my researches turned up that the cheaper ones don’t last as well (surprise surprise), don’t have the flexibility and don’t have cooling fans (which improve service life) so we paid $175 for ours. While it is rated at 2100 watts we have found that for most things 1800 watts seems to be its maximum setting and for some things, like frying, it can be turned down to 300 to 400 watts and still work very well. That way I can monitor the state of the batteries and if there is a problem I can turn the hotplate down. Overall, we are very pleased with it though.
It has been interesting getting back into cooking using electricity again, and if you’d said to me a couple of years ago that this is what I would be doing, I wouldn’t have believed you!
