Energy Saving Cooking Tips
With Thanksgiving preparation, and whirlwind of cooking plans underway, you may be wondering how to reduce energy use in the kitchen. Here are a few green living tips for saving energy while preparing your Thanksgiving dinner….or any dinner!
Scrub, Baby Scrub: A blackened cooktop on your kitchen stove absorbs heat, and causes you to consume more energy, but a shiny stove top efficiently reflects energy into the cooking pan. Now’s the time to clean your cooktop, and get ready for the Holidays.
Join the Hoods: Range hoods can help you quickly whisk away the extra heat in your kitchen, before you’re prompted to turn on the air conditioner!
Ugh…Clean the Oven: The last thing you wanted to hear, right? Just like a dirty stove top, a grimy oven steals energy, and can cause foods to cook unevenly. Ahem…just do it.
Double-Down: Cook 2 things at once whenever you can. Staggering the pans, and rotating oven racks will help with heat circulation.
Chill Out: Defrost foods in your refrigerator in advance. This prevents having to defrost in the microwave, and reduces cooking time.
Convection Perfection: If you have a convection oven, put it to work! Convection ovens are quicker, and use less energy than traditional stoves.
The Frigidaire gas stove above includes a convection “Speed Bake” cooking option. The convection stove is available at AJ Madison.
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by Traci Latoz
2 comments
Are you sure cleaning the oven saves energy and a dirty oven does not conserve energy? Ugggggh…Ok, I am going to clean the oven :). These tips are really great, even if a little hard to hear!
Thank you for the great post!
How about these Thanksgiving kitchen tips:
- Plan ahead before you open the fridge. Open it once and pull out everything you need for the next half hour. Opening and closing the fridge repeatedly wastes a lot of energy, because every time you open it, cold air falls out and warm air enters.
- Eat a chicken instead of a turkey. Turkeys keep getting bigger and many people can’t keep up with all those leftovers. By eating a chicken (smaller, and often tastier) you’ll avoid wasting food, which is a form of wasting energy, plus you’ll use less energy cooking it. Better yet, cook your chicken in a microwave convection oven, which does a beautiful job on poultry using much less energy than an electric range. (Better yet - eat a tofurkey - 100% vegetarian and uses far less energy to produce.)
- DON’T use the range hood unless you have to, if you’re heating your home (as opposed to cooling it). No point sucking out all that perfectly good heat, and sucking in the cold fall air.
- Invite neighbors and local friends to your Thanksgiving dinner, instead of far-flung family. While it’s great to connect with family, driving hundreds of miles for a family dinner is not something we can keep doing forever as a species, without ruining the planet. Just because a tradition is sacred doesn’t mean it frees us from the need to behave in an environmentally responsible manner.
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