Saving electricity by cooking in the dishwasher – advisable or not a good idea?

Seasoning fish, meat or vegetables and putting them in the dishwasher with the dirty dishes to cook them – this trend is intended to save electricity and thus help protect the environment. How useful is that actually?

Pack fish, meat or vegetables waterproof and cook them in the dishwasher at the same time

The trick when cooking in the dishwasher – according to various information sites on the Internet – is to pack the vegetables, fish or meat airtight so that no detergent gets on it and makes the dish inedible. It is said that aluminum foil, roasting tubes and mason jars are suitable for this. It makes sense to let the dish run on a washing program that corresponds to the ingredients, i.e. to choose the temperature according to whether vegetables, fish or meat are to be cooked.

But be careful: the Schleswig-Holstein consumer advice center warns against using this trick. “There are many ways to save energy in the household and to prepare food in a nutritious and safe way. But cooking in the dishwasher is the wrong way,” quotes the news portal Merkur Gudrun Köster from VZ Schleswig-Holstein. Because as tempting as it sounds that the food cannot burn in the dishwasher and is kept warm for longer after preparation, it is not worth the risk. It is not known how aggressive detergents at high temperatures affect aluminum foil and roasting tubes and which pollutants might get into the food.

What about cooking in the washing machine?

It has also not been scientifically researched how such packaging behaves in the washing machine. It is theoretically possible to put potatoes in a waterproof bag (caution: never in a glass, they will break in the washing machine at the latest when you spin them!) and cook them in the washing machine and at the same time process them into mashed potatoes – but how It is not certain that this preparation method is actually healthy.

When it comes to environmental protection, cooking in the dishwasher is not necessarily helpful either. Because if you wrap the food in aluminum foil, for example, you may use a few kilowatt hours less electricity, but you produce waste that is very environmentally harmful.

Editorial office finanzen.net

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