Thermal Cooker

[jebatty]

I stumbled onto this and think the thermal cooker is a really good idea for energy conservation. Bring a pot meal to boil, remove from the heat, put on the lid, and come back a few hours later for a cooked meal. If you're not familiar with the thermal cooker, *oogle it and take a look, Impressive.

 

[DevilsBrew]

Never heard of one. Thank you for sharing that. It seems to work like a crockpot. I was thinking of a pressure cooker/crockpot this Fall but the thermal cooker is a better choice.

 

[pdf27]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haybox - mostly replaced with electric slow cookers nowadays as they're significantly easier to use and (of modern and well insulated) don't use very much more energy.

 

[jebatty]

The electric slow cooker, if insulated like the thermal cooker, could make a reasonable alternative. Perhaps I need to look harder, but I have not seen one is well insulated. Do you have a recommendation? It seems to me though that one shot electricity (or gas) to bring a pot to boil and then no needed heat after that remains far more efficient. But I have no experience with a thermal cooker, and possibly the picture is somewhat different.

 

[pdf27]

We've got one of these - (broken link removed to http://www.tefal.co.uk/All+Products/Cooking+Appliances/Table+Top+Cooking/Products/Tefal+4+in+1+Rice+Cooker/Tefal+4+in+1+Rice+Cooker.htm) (UK only - you may be able to find a US equivalent). It's not noticeably warm to the touch when running, so I think it's reasonable to assume that heat loss is pretty minimal.

Other thing to remember - slow cookers don't need to be brought to the boil, thermal cookers might. That means you need better insulation for the same cooking effect (heat loss is proportional to temperature difference), and it isn't at all implausible that the total energy use might be smaller on the slow cooker. More importantly, the difference is going to be pretty minimal and any "plug in and go" solution is going to be easier than boiling a pot then putting it in a box.