Cooking and energy use - best methods to reduce costs?

Mstty

Percypeeved said:

If I am doing something like a stew, pasta dish, cottage pie or a dish that can be reheated in the microwave, I make double, chill and refrigerate half and have it the next day or day after. Saves on energy and washing up.

Skills that I fear the deliveroo generation never had and need quickly 

luvchocolate

I use electricity to cook, I use slow cooker and freeze portions. 
I'm looking at ways to cut costs like everyone...I live alone and retired. 
Smallish kitchen. 
My microwave is a very basic one cost £30 6 years ago....wondering about a combination one or air fryer .

As I get older I find it harder to make decisions. 

new_owner

We use a slow cooker, microwave 5.something L air fryer and we have an 8L instant Pot with an air fryer lid and 5.6L without. We use them for cooking constantly. we have not used the oven since the start of the year.

We bought the instant pot over the ninja because we preferred the more compact sizes and the separate lids (+lower costs)

Northern_Wanderer

QrizB said:

Northern_Wanderer said:

Just an update, I bought the Ninja 11 in 1 multi-cooker, been using it a month now. My monthly electric usage is down by around 70kwh. I have been trying to save energy in general but am convinced the Ninja is the main energy saver for me.

Wow that's quite some saving! Glad to hear that it's working out so well for you.

I made a pasta bake in the ninja as a one pot meal. Usually I would have a ring on for the pasta, a ring for the sauce, cook sausage balls in oven then combine all and cook in oven for 25 minutes. I winged it with the recipe in the Ninja but it probably took 20 minutes total to cook in one power source using steam air fry & air fry. So I can see how my energy saving can be so much just by cooking dfferently and my outlay will be recovered by the electric savings fairly quickly. Saves on water too and washing up plus my time. I'm truly amazed by this device and no I don't have any vested interests.

Ant555

ref air fryers - im seriously considering an air fryer as an alternative to using the oven and have watched a handful of youtube videos but many of them seem to involve cooking stuff, putting it to one side then cooking something else.  My immediate thought is that I would put the oven on to keep that first lot of food warm whilst the second lot cooks   

I am going to watch a few more tutorials but is that a general feature of cooking using an air fryer that people just adapt to, or is is just that you need to get a larger one if you want to cook more stuff to be ready at the same time?

Chloe_G

My Tower air fryer takes up a lot of space on the worktop but you can only cook a portion of chips in it for one person.  I wouldn't have room for a larger one!

littleteapot

Mstty said:

Percypeeved said:

If I am doing something like a stew, pasta dish, cottage pie or a dish that can be reheated in the microwave, I make double, chill and refrigerate half and have it the next day or day after. Saves on energy and washing up.

Skills that I fear the deliveroo generation never had and need quickly 

Now who's making generational stereotypes

I personally pre-date the 'deliveroo generation' but even a lot of people of similar age to me have more takeaways than is sensible.

I agree though, batch cooking is a skill that a lot of people need to learn, and quickly. Other than the cost benefit, the other benefit is the amount of time it saves - both in terms of cooking time and amount of washing up (one of the reasons I've been doing it for many years) compared to cooking fresh every day. My wife often says that the food doesn't taste as good or have the right texture when reheated. But I don't mind that  - to me eating is just one of those essential tasks of life, like going to the toilet! As long as the food tastes 'reasonable' and is hot then it's good enough. If I want to 'enjoy' a meal we go out once in a while to a reasonably good restaurant.

Going back on topic, whilst cooking some chicken and roast potatoes in the combination microwave yesterday evening I was thinking about the vast amount of heat radiated by this device into the room.

The combination oven takes approximately 15-20% less time to cook the same meal correctly compared to the conventional oven. However the conventional oven has a thick layer of insulation around the main cavity, whereas the combi has absolutely nothing. As a result of this, I find the kitchen heats up a lot more when using the combi than it does when using the conventional oven. I haven't yet measured the total consumption of each but I suspect it's not as clear-cut as I originally thought.

Percypeeved

I have a 5.5L air fryer, which is fine for two people.

Effician

littleteapot said:

Mstty said:

Percypeeved said:

If I am doing something like a stew, pasta dish, cottage pie or a dish that can be reheated in the microwave, I make double, chill and refrigerate half and have it the next day or day after. Saves on energy and washing up.

Skills that I fear the deliveroo generation never had and need quickly 

Going back on topic, whilst cooking some chicken and roast potatoes in the combination microwave yesterday evening I was thinking about the vast amount of heat radiated by this device into the room.

We have a Sharp 40l combi & using the poultry setting for a 1.8kg chicken it uses ~1.5kWh. Cooking the same size chicken in the pressure cooker & then crisping the skin in the air fryer uses ~0.6kWh. The taste & texture are close but different  in a good way though & i must add that we normally inject the flesh with a garlic & ginger infused olive oil as this makes for better cold cuts.

EssexHebridean

Northern_Wanderer said:

Thanks for the comments so far.

The Ninja Foodi does look quite big, but I'm very tempted because it has air fryer/ steam/ slow/ pressure cooker in one. I'm not sure which size to go for as it's just 2 of us but I do tend to cook more than needed and freeze it. There's a 11-in-1 6L 1460W and a 14-in-1 7.5L 1760W (which is cheaper on offer just now) - anyone using either of these? Is it going to cost a lot more to run the 7.5L?

I'm currently deliberating over one of the Ninja Foodi's too - the 6l model which would be plenty big enough for us. My dilemma is because we currently cook mostly on gas - with occasional use of a combi microwave or a slow cooker. As someone else said above, if we use the main oven rather than the smaller top one, we try to fill it, so I have the feeling that the ninja would  actually increase our costs, even once the not inconsiderable purchase cost is removed from the equation. I'm unconvinced it would do the slow cooking thing better than our existing large crockpot style one, it *might* cut down on the use of either just the combi or the microwave plus small oven for things like jacket tatties - but overall I'm unsure whether this is "enough" to justify it. Realistically we're not going to be replacing the gas cooker with electric - it's only 5 years old, we like it, it does a good job and we both prefer using gas hobs, in particular. Possibly the 11-in 1 could replace the combi microwave - but realistically - would it?  

I'd be really interested to hear anyone else's take on this as frankly I've reached the point of total indecision!