Saving electricity starts in the kitchen
The topics of sustainability and careful energy consumption are part of everyday life in today’s society. Whether it’s your own car or various electronic devices: over the years, manufacturers and consumers have developed a certain sensitivity to energy and its consumption.
If you are striving to use energy in your own household as sustainably as possible, you should start cooking in the kitchen. Certain tips can save a considerable amount of energy here. The careful use of energy when cooking could also pay off overall, with the kitchen eating up an average of around 10 percent of the total energy consumption in a four-person household, as reported by the Augsburger Allgemeine.
If the following information is observed, the energy consumption during cooking can be broken down to the essentials.
The right pot makes all the difference
Saving electricity when cooking starts with the choice of kitchen utensils. Care should be taken to use pots of the highest quality possible. These are characterized by an inwardly curved and smooth base, which expands when heated and thus lies flat on the stovetop when cooking.
You should also make sure that the pot always fits perfectly on the hob in order to use the stove as efficiently as possible. If the cookware should have a larger radius than the stovetop, the cooking time will be unnecessarily longer, and energy will be lost if the cookware is too small. As the portal Heizsparer.de determined, around 20 to 30 percent of the energy emitted is lost even if the hob is one centimeter too large all around.
In addition, you should always cook with a suitable pot lid, because if this is omitted, the required energy triples on average. Cooking is even more economical with a special pressure cooker, which is up to 50 percent more efficient than conventional cookware.
If only water is heated, it is worth reaching for the kettle. For amounts up to about 1.5 liters, this is usually more economical than any saucepan.
Convection trumps top/bottom heat
A lot of energy can also be saved when using the oven. Modern ovens usually have the circulating air function and this is exactly what should be preferred to the top/bottom heat. On the one hand, the heat is distributed more evenly in the oven by circulating air, which is why you have to bake with less heat and accordingly less energy, on the other hand, this function allows several trays to cook at the same time.
If food is only to be reheated, it is worth using the microwave – it saves time and energy.
Other application notes
In addition, however, other basic principles apply to make cooking as energy-efficient as possible. When cooking in a pot, the heat can be reduced immediately after boiling to save further energy without increasing the cooking time. In addition, the stove can be switched off completely in the last few minutes, because the residual heat usually provides sufficient warmth with which to finish cooking the food.
You can also save more energy when operating the oven. This means that the oven does not have to be heated up in advance for the most common meals. Although this extends the cooking time somewhat, preheating takes around 20 percent more energy. Once the dish is in the oven, it should not be opened again until the end of the cooking time. Similar to cooking, the oven can be switched off a few minutes before the end of the cooking time when baking and the dish can be finished cooking with the residual heat.
Last but not least: in the special case of boiling eggs, most consumers use too much water. Usually, no more than a finger’s breadth of water is needed to cook the egg. The rising water vapor ensures that the breakfast egg hardens evenly all around. The same applies to vegetables.
Henry Ely / Editor finanzen.net
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