Shrink Your Cookprint: Green Gifts for Cooks
Make your New Year’s goal to cook with less fuel. And give snazzy gifts that help others shrink their cookprints, too. (What’s a cookprint? Find out here.)
How you cook is as important as what you cook. Ovens, for instance, waste 94% of their fuel, earning them the title “Humvees of the kitchen.” In fact, appliances account for thirty percent of our household energy consumption, and the biggest guzzlers are in the kitchen.
The good news: You can bake, roast, broil, grill, and fry in vastly greener ways, saving fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gases, and conserving water and other resources. Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way shows you how, with hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint” (it’s available March, 2009 by Da Capo Press).
For instance, you’ll be greener if you cook on stovetops and with Crock-Pots rather than in ovens. To cut out even more fuel, speed-cook with pressure cookers and boil water in an electric kettle instead of over a burner. Lots of other tools can help shrink cookprints. Here’s a few of my favorites, personally tested for NewGreenBasics.com, and ones I use all the time:
Viking Portable Induction Burner
Induction cooking works by sending a magnetic field through ferrous metal (as in cookware containing cast iron, steel, or other combination that is magnetically reactive). The reaction creates heat (by agitating the molecules), and it’s this heat that cooks the food. The result: a near instant transfer of energy, with efficient absorption of over 90 percent of this energy (compared to around 50 percent efficiency with gas). Plus, the cooker’s surface stays cool, very little heat is released into the kitchen, and the food can actually cook quicker. The burner surface stays cool, so you avoid burned-on mess, and with this nifty portable unit, you can cook anywhere there’s a plug.
Fissler’s Blue Point Pressure Cooker
Pressure cookers save up to 50 percent of the energy used by conventional cooking, cook up to 70 percent quicker, and the foods retain more nutrients. Fissler’s design takes the concept a step further: It’s totally silent during operation, because the cooker seals completely and won’t release steam unless over-pressurized. The less steam released, the cooler the kitchen; and less water is needed because of the lower degree of water loss. Nutrients are also less diluted. As a bonus, the unit does double-duty: switch from pressure cooker to conventional mode just by sliding a button, so it’s like having two pots for the price of one.
Kuhn Rikon Hotpan
Here’s the hip, modern version of ye olde “hay
box” cooker (hay-lined boxes where hot pots passively “cooked”): Heat
food on the stove in a high-end, stainless steel pan with insulated,
convex lid (the lid’s shape helps baste the food). Then, before the
food is done, remove the pan from the stove, place it in a brightly
colored shell to create a double wall of insulation, and let it
passively cook, without added fuel, until done. You’ll cut
fuel-consumption by half or more. Plus, the removable shell can be used
separately, as a salad bowl or to keep hot breads warm, for instance.
Capresso Electric Kettle
An electric tea kettle always makes my
list of functional green appliances: It boils water with less fuel than
a cooktop, shuts off automatically, and you can use the hot water for
more than just tea. This model boils water faster than on a stove,
keeps the kitchen cooler, and it’s handy when you want to rehydrate
dried mushrooms, dried tomatoes, and powdered soups; or to jumpstart a
pot of water for pasta, steamed vegetables, or potatoes.
Jura-Capresso ENA 5 Coffee Center
The most complete machine I’ve
seen: In 5-10 seconds it grinds the beans, tamps them, and brews them
(with a perfect layer of crema) using one button and no mess; and
froths milk too. Whip up espresso, latte, cappuccino, regular coffee,
or tea. Adjust settings for stronger or weaker brews, coarser or finer
grinds, and larger or smaller cups. The ENA 5 ranked No. 1 for energy
savings in independent Swiss and German consumer tests, earning the
2008 award for most energy efficient automatic coffee machine. (It
saved 40 percent more energy than other brands.) A Zero Energy Switch
means no stand-by energy whatsoever, while the Energy Saving Mode
reduces energy significantly when the machine is on. It’s pricey, but
can pay for itself in a year compared to a daily fix of Starbucks (with
superior quality and speedier results). Just the thing for specialty
organic, fair trade beans, coffee lovers, and small buzzing offices.
Tulsi Hybrid-Solar Oven
The Tulsi oven is a unique breed of solar
oven and a favorite of tech-minded cooks. It works without solar
panels, just the heat of the sun, reflecting mirrors, and a black
interior. But this particular hybrid contraption also comes with an
electric booster to kick-start the heat or keep things cooking on
cloudy days. When closed, the Tulsi Oven looks like a big red,
hard-shelled suitcase (making it easily portable), and includes a set
of cooking pans.
Remember: The kitchen is ripe with opportunities for going greener. It’s the place where people can make real choices, and take direct control of their impact – without letting the family feel deprived, hungry, or stressed. In fact, everyone will feel better just knowing they’re helping the planet – and they can do it one bite (or one cookprint) at a time. For more products and tips to green your life, visit NewGreenBasics.com, and go to Amazon.com to pre-order my book, Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen--the New Green Basics Way, available in March 2009. This book includes blue oven and green flame methods to reduce fuel usage, and cookprint-shrinking strategies that go from farm to fridge to fork.
Happy Green Holidays!
Check out Kate’s favorite kitchen products in the Kitchen & Home Gift Guide.
Merry on December 05, 2008 at 06:01 PM
And of course, who *wouldn't* want to bake outside in the Minnesota winter? And sure, $1199 sounds like a lot of a coffee maker, but if you spend more than $3 a day at Starbucks, every single day, then it's a steal! Ha, these "be more green" posts always seem to be for people with a lot more time and a lot more disposable income than me.