Green, Energy Efficient Cooking
One place most of us can reduce our carbon footprint without sacrificing or spending much is in the kitchen. I have changed my behavior here a lot over the past few years to be more energy efficient and have shared in this article some of the easiest and most impactful ways I have found to be more green.
Ekotrope Founder and Lead Engineer, Nick Sisler cooking at home in Boston!
Buy Less Meat, Specifically Beef and Lamb
Before we even start cooking, the foods we choose to buy have probably the biggest impact on how green our meal will be. I suspect it is pretty common knowledge that meat has a significant greenhouse gas impact, so if you can eat less meat that is fantastic. For me, meat has proven too difficult to give up entirely, but it has been pretty easy to shift to eating very little beef and lamb, which have an incredibly high environmental impact. Our World in Data has a nifty chart where you can look at the greenhouse gas emissions impact of tons of different foods. The chart below shows 4 common meats along with potatoes and peas.
I have been using the meal planning app Mealime for a few years and love it. It makes the whole home cooking process a lot easier for me. Mealime provides tons of delicious recipes with step-by-step instructions and grocery lists that you can export to grocery delivery services. It also allows you to filter out any foods you want to avoid and won’t show you recipes that include those ingredients, making it easy to make delicious meals without beef and lamb.
Defrost in the Fridge
If you take an item from the freezer and put it on the counter, it will cool down the space and, if it is cold outside, make your heating system work harder. If you put it in the refrigerator it will help keep your fridge cool so it doesn’t have to work as hard. It will also be less likely to grow bacteria and spoil.
Don’t Preheat as Much
There are 3 main arguments for preheating:
For certain foods, chefs say that preheating can improve the flavor or the quality of the bake. This article from CookingLight describes why preheating can be valuable for egg dishes, bread, pastries and some vegetables and meats. I don’t cook egg dishes, bread or pastries in the oven, but I do cook a lot of meat and vegetables and have not noticed a difference in flavor when I don’t preheat.
It can save some time and make it easier to follow recipe times. In practice, recipe oven times are rarely perfect and you will really want to monitor the food anyway. Also modern ovens heat up pretty quickly so you really are not saving much time.
Preheating your oven can reduce time food spends in the ‘danger zone’, between 40 and 140°F, when bacteria grow more easily. This article from the USDA provides more information about the danger zone. I encourage you to use your judgment here. If you are cooking a small dish and your oven heats up quickly, you probably don’t need to preheat. If your oven is slow and you are cooking a big dish that will take a while to heat up, preheating will be safer. More importantly, do not leave the food out at room temperature.
The downside to preheating is that a lot of energy is being used that is not going toward cooking your food. If you have an oven that takes a while to heat up, you may still want to preheat, but you can put the food in before it gets all the way to temperature.
Avoid Opening the Oven Door
Use the oven light feature to keep an eye on the food and a meat thermometer to quickly and accurately know if meat is done. A thermometer like this one is great because you don’t have to open the oven to check the temperature.
This thermometer makes a great addition to your kitchen. It’s ideal for quickly and accurately assessing the temperature of food in the oven without having to open the door.
Don’t Post-Heat
As soon as you are done cooking, turn whatever heat source you are using off. You can even experiment with turning it off for the last few minutes of cooking and let the food absorb the residual heat in the pan or oven for free.
Cook Multiple Things in the Oven at the Same Time
You can reduce the time and energy required for cooking by cooking dishes in the oven at the same time. Most dishes aside from baked goods are pretty flexible when it comes to oven temperature. Meat is the most flexible. In most cases, you can set the temperature to whatever the highest priority non-meat dish calls for and then monitor the dishes until they’re done. Just make sure to arrange the dishes so that they all have enough space around them for air to flow. This article goes into more detail.
Don’t Boil More Water Than You Need
When cooking rice and pasta dishes, try to be more conservative with how much water you fill into the pot. It takes a lot of energy to bring water to a boil and it will save you some time.
Don’t Go Topless!
While they can be the most annoying to store, your pot lids can save energy! Put the lid on your dutch ovens, soup pots, saucepans, and skillets when cooking to keep the heat contained and shave some time off your meal prep. This also keeps moisture in the pot or pan, which is essential for steaming foods like vegetables, seafood, and grains and cooking them to tender perfection.
There are some instances where it does make sense to leave the lid off. Some recipes require evaporation, such as when reducing a sauce or thickening a soup or gravy. Or if you’re searing or stir-frying and you want the food to be crispy rather than moist.
Go Electric
Modern electric stoves are comparable to gas in quality and can be emissions-free.
Save and Eat Leftovers
A lot of energy and effort went into making that food, don’t waste it!
Use the Microwave to Heat Them Up
Microwaves are quite a bit more efficient than ovens.
Use the Dishwasher
I’ve spoken to a few people that hand wash their dishes to save water. Studies have shown that this is not true. Furthermore it’s probably a waste of your time. If you have a dishwasher, I encourage you to use it. Try to fill it up before running.
I hope you find these tips useful! Thanks for reading!