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The Fireless Cooker That Feeds
- brudgers 5y agoA longer article that was cited, https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/07/cooking-pot-insulation-key-to-sustainable-cooking.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/07/cooking-pot-insulati...
- finiteseries 5y agoEverything related to heat transfer is still relevant and very, very interesting, but I love how dated the assumption of non renewable energy is now in that method of calculating thermal efficiency. Who cares if the perfect turbine could only ever convert 59% of the wind power through it!
- 8bitsrule 5y agoAlso mentions the Rocket Stove (new to me), which looks well-worth getting to know about. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_mass_heater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_mass_heater] (Wiki article describes several designs as well.) "a rocket mass heater consists of an insulated combustion chamber where fuel is burned with high efficiency at high temperature, and a large thermal mass in contact with the exhaust gases which absorbs most of the generated heat before the gases are released to the atmosphere.... "
- cultofmetatron 5y agoAnd this is why the instant pot is such a good value. It's very insulated and incredibly efficient
- jack_riminton 5y agoAs well as easy-to-use, safe and consistent
- GeekyBear 5y agoI have a different brand, but I use my electric pressure cooker many times a week. It's a great time saver for cooking real food from scratch.
- ajot 5y agoLittle nitpick: the title is "The Fireless Cooker that Feeds Low-tech Magazine", as in "this is the fireless cooker we use".
- tyleo 5y agoThanks for this. I was quite confused by the title. It appears as "The Fireless Cooker That Feeds" for me. I thought, "Isn't any sort of cooker supposed to feed?"
- foobarian 5y agoWhat problem is this trying to solve exactly
- aspyct 5y agoCooking when/where energy is scarce. Very useful to save on fuel while camping, for example. Also, I suppose, next time the electric grid is down and you want to cook on battery.
- tenuousemphasis 5y agoAnother benefit is that it reduces the heat transferred to the living environment during cooking. Might be useful in a small living space like an RV or tiny house.
- RandallBrown 5y agoIt technically just prolongs the amount of time that the heat is transferred right? That would still be useful if you're in a small space and the heat loss of the space is greater than the heat loss of the insulated pot.
- tenuousemphasis 5y agoYes, you're right. It slows the rate of heat transfer.
- aspyct 5y agolol, clearly we're not living in the same climate :D
- oh_sigh 5y agoA lot of people out in the country don't actually have a gas line to their house, and cook using bottled gas. I lived in a situation like that at one point - the cost of the gas saved by the device wasn't really important to me, but it was the burden of making a half day trip to the city to replace the bottle that pushed me to conserve gas.
- falcolas 5y agoTL;DR: It's just a good amount of insulation around a vessel (like a crockpot) that's been heated up in some other way.
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoIt's a very large teapot cosy, in other words. Seems reasonable, though obviously you still need some way to bring the pot up to temp (for that cast iron, induction would be efficient if not low-tech).
- RankingMember 5y agoYeah, when I think of a cooker, I think of something that heats something up, not just keeps it going. The stove with one burner dropped down [1] seems more practical, not requiring a separate device/extra step. [1] https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883301a3fd27c2f4970b-500wi https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883301a3fd...
- dudeofea 5y agoless oven space, need to replace entire stove, made in a factory and not at home. It is cleaner perhaps and more purpose-built. But I would not call that practical.
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoI wonder if you couldn't get similar efficiencies by insulating the walls and lid of the pot itself though (and that would work on any stove, not just one that had a sunken burner of a fixed diameter). Choosing a good material for high-temp insulation might be tricky (without making the wall thickness high) but I for one would be happy to have an nice Ti + aerogel pan... (Ti does work on induction too!)
- druadh 5y agoThey do mention that in the article "doubles the efficiency of any cooking device because it shortens the time on the fire"
- ziggus 5y agoThere's a few commercial versions of this idea that combine some sort of insulation with a vacuum container, which increases the efficiency. https://www.cabelas.com/shop/en/thermos-cook-and-carry-system https://www.cabelas.com/shop/en/thermos-cook-and-carry-syste...
- jerrycruncher 5y agoThere was also an infomercial[1] for a product called "AirCore" in the US a couple decades ago for something similar. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIIWBvgyvmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIIWBvgyvmI
- AmosLightnin 5y agoWhen cooking, the rate of heat needed to maintain the same temperature is exactly the rate at which the food is cooling. So heating up a pot and insulating it is roughly equivalent to heating up a pot and continually heating it to maintain the same temperature. If we changed the culture of cooking to recognize this, we could save a lot of energy.
- falcolas 5y agoThe pot in this "cooker" is dropping in temperature. Slowly but surely, since no insulation method is perfect against heat transfer.
- AmosLightnin 5y agoTrue. But if the rate of heat loss is low enough, then it doesn't much matter.
- cedricd 5y agoExplaining this just to make sure I get it. When we cook we're bringing up food to a certain temp, then maintaining it at that temp till it's done cooking. If we could perfectly insulate it, then it could hold that temp as long as we want without being on the fire. So the only energy input is getting it hot -- after that it's cooking on its own. So this is trying to approximate that by insulating the pot. I always sort of assumed that there's a lot of heat 'loss' from food itself heating up -- as in most the cook time is getting the food up to the temp (i.e. when cooking a steak), not waiting for it to cook at the temp. But I suppose that for certain grains and stews and things that thinking is wrong.
- falcolas 5y agoYou're not wrong - once the food is at the right temperature, it's done. You can hold food at the "right" temperature for a long time, but if you go above it, it'll over-cook. There's a few ways to heat food up, the most common of which is to heat the vessel to well above the right temperature and wait for the food to come up to the right temperature. The cooker linked takes advantage of this method since it is fine if the vessel comes down in temperature a little bit, so long as it doesn't get below the food's "done" temperature. You still have to be vigilant about the temperature of the food, to ensure it's not overcooked. The less common method is to heat the vessel (often water) up to the right temperature, and let the food come to equilibrium. This is basically sous-vide, and would not work with the linked method, since the temperature of water can't go down. You might be able to fudge things a bit by over-heating the water a bit, but then you risk overcooking the food.
- fnord77 5y agoso, styrofoam is not technology?
- nllewellyn 5y agoWe used to cook up a stew or a joint in a casserole dish with a lid (like a dutch oven), and put it in a haybox for the day so we had a hot hearty meal at the end of a day outdoors. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_oven https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_oven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haybox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haybox But I've just found this and it looks excellent! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_cooking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_cooking
- turtlebits 5y agoThese have existed for years in Asia. Just search for “thermal cooker”.
- elitepleb 5y agoA great way to cook rice when electronic assistance is unavailable.
- aitchnyu 5y agoStyrofoam is stable upto 79 C / 175 F. But is it completely safe, especially from offgassing?
- aaron695 5y ago