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Barilla passive cooker

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Re: Barilla passive cooker

#191

Post by HWR_14 »

p1necone wrote: post #172

> *water boiling phase excluded Why is the part of the process that consumes the most energy arbitrarily excluded from this, am I missing something or are they just being dishonest so that they can include a bigger number in their marketing?

> am I missing something or are they just being dishonest so that they can include a bigger number in their marketing?

I assume that latter.

But, if I was being generous, I would say it's because the bringing to a boil is oftentimes handled by another process (e.g. electric kettle) so it's hard to compare.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#192

Post by christophilus »

bmitc wrote: post #178
vel0city wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans largely don't use electric kettles because Americans largely don't drink tea at home and thus don't use kettles as often as the rest of the world. Most households I know don't even own a kettle. Not a stovetop one, not an electric one. If you were to ask most Americans why they don't have an electric kettle at home they won't say "because I only have 120V outlets in the kitchen." They'll say it is because t…

Once introduced, it's hard to downplay the usefulness of an electric kettle.

Agreed. Someone gave us ours as a wedding gift. I thought, “Great. More clutter I don’t need.”

I use it daily for tea and coffee (Aeropress). And now, thanks to this thread, I may use it to speed up my pasta water boiling.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#193

Post by jrmg »

fuckstick wrote: post #129
askvictor wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans don't really do electric kettles, largely on account of using 110V mains, which limits power to around 1100W, making it a lot slower than ~2000W electric kettles in the 200+V world.

It’s not that slow. 1. They sell plenty of kettles in the US (touch grass and go to Target sometime or something) - a large portion of those sales are probably to Asian households. It is simply that if you have a drip coffee maker and don’t drink much tea why do you need a kettle. No idea where this dumb myth comes from - kettles are not hard to find in the US, they work fine - there is a ton of demand it is just rel…

No idea where this dumb myth comes from

I think it’s a hangover from when it was true - fairly recently in a human-lifespan timescale. I moved to the SF Bay Area from the UK 20 years ago, and had to buy a weird kettle from Amazon. None of the nearby stores had a decent one. That’s definitely not true now though.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#194

Post by sltkr »

FPGAhacker wrote: post #176
sltkr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. I sincerely doubt this figure in cases where electricity is generated from fossil fuels in the first place. For example, I lived in the Netherlands where 80% of electricity is still produced by fossil fuels, mostly in gas-fired power plants. As I understand it, generating electricity from gas has an efficiency of only about 50%. That means you lose a lot o…

Damn, 40 per kWh electricity. My last energy bill (including taxes and fees) is showing $0.124 per kWh electricity, and $0.62 per cubic meter of gas.

With those prices, gas is still twice as expensive as electricity, so even if the gas stove is half as efficient, you still break even.

And yes, electricity prices in Europe are crazy right now. You can see some graphs here that show how enormous the spikes are compared to years of relative stability (no need to read the text; the graphs speak for themselves, and the y-axis starts at 0!)

Electricity: https://www.overstappen.nl/energie/stroomprijs/

Gas: https://www.overstappen.nl/energie/gasprijzen/

So apparently I slightly misremembered the prices; those graphs show that in 2020 the average gas price was about 84 cents per m3 (or about 8.4 cents per kWh assuming 10 kWh per m3), or 23 cents per kWh of electricity. That's closer to 1:3 than 1:4 on a per-kWh basis, but the general argument still holds that it seems like cooking on gas is cheaper than cooking on electricity.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#195

Post by moron4hire »

gsk22 wrote: post #126
ghostly_s wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confidently dismissing someone else's firsthand experience, exactly the level of intelligent conversation this site is renown for.

Yes, much better to blindly believe an anecdote that contradicts known food science.

Mold can definitely grow on the surface of liquids. Have you never left a cup of coffee out on a counter for a few days?

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#197

Post by wintermutestwin »

sltkr wrote: post #156
vel0city wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans largely don't use electric kettles because Americans largely don't drink tea at home and thus don't use kettles as often as the rest of the world. Most households I know don't even own a kettle. Not a stovetop one, not an electric one. If you were to ask most Americans why they don't have an electric kettle at home they won't say "because I only have 120V outlets in the kitchen." They'll say it is because t…

I know it's heresy to the British, but you can heat water for tea in the microwave just fine. And at least in my European imagination, every American has a microwave in their home.

>every American has a microwave in their home

Of course we do! Europeans don't all have microwave ovens? How do you warm up leftovers?

And yes, I drink tea daily with microwaved water.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#198

Post by yunwal »

fein wrote: post #171
vel0city wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly it seems more likely for an American household to have a Keurig machine (or hell, even multiple Keurigs) than to have any kind of kettle.

You're on target here. I have become the dumping ground for misbehaving keurigs from family and have managed to make most of them work or frankenstein parts between them. I hate the machines and wish this never happened. I was happy with a french press. Curse my urge to not waste things.

Last sentence is ironic because keurigs waste so much plastic if you use them daily.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#199

Post by yawnxyz »

Surprised no one's mentioned "one-pot pasta" recipes yet, where you cook veggies / sauce, and just drop raw pasta into the pot while the water is cooking off.

The pasta comes out starchier since you're not throwing away the starch water, and it tastes great, but definitely "different" from a "real" Italian pasta dish. Still great though! Italians view this as sacrilege but it's great fwiw.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#200

Post by wintermutestwin »

bmitc wrote: post #178
vel0city wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans largely don't use electric kettles because Americans largely don't drink tea at home and thus don't use kettles as often as the rest of the world. Most households I know don't even own a kettle. Not a stovetop one, not an electric one. If you were to ask most Americans why they don't have an electric kettle at home they won't say "because I only have 120V outlets in the kitchen." They'll say it is because t…

Once introduced, it's hard to downplay the usefulness of an electric kettle.

While traveling through Europe, most AirBnBs had electric kettles and they all had gross scale deposits in them so I ended up boiling water in a pot.
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