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Barilla passive cooker

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Re: Barilla passive cooker

#231

Post by sailfast »

askvictor wrote: post #99
jiggawatts wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way to save energy is to use an electric kettle to get the water up to boiling. This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. Combined with passive cooking it could save real money… Technology Connections on YouTube has a good video about how electric kettles are the superior way to boil water: https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c

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.

FWIW in my American experience most everyone I know has one and uses it, so your mileage may vary.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#232

Post by kortex »

How much of cooking protocol is to smooth over differences in heat flux? Recipes almost always seem to call for pre-heating an oven or bringing a pot to a boil before adding pasta/noodles. But temperature is temperature (when it comes to slow cooked foods, ignoring searing / maillard reactions). Are there any reasons not to just start cooking immediately while the oven/water is still coming up to temp, if I control for doneness? I cook almost exclusively by doneness anyways (internal temp and/or consistency), and it seems like for most foods, what matters most is area-under-the-curve (which is what the heat equation suggests).

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#233

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

selcuka wrote: post #187
ghayes wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim is weird, though. If they said “just add to boiling water and turn off immediately” then they would claim it’s 100% more efficient*. If you turn off your water right before it’s boiling and cook your pasta, then Barilla is an energy generator*.

Actually reverse cycle air conditioners are said to have a heating efficiency of over 100%, but what they really do is to move the heat from one point to another. It's all about definitions; if you define the system as your room, it will be more than 100% efficient. If your system is the universe, then it's always 100%. By the same logic, yes, your hypothetical statement can be rephrased as "if you already have boili…

But the whole point is that Barilla's definition is ludicrous. The only definition that really makes sense is how much energy did it take to get the pasta from the box to my plate, and Barilla is excluding the vast majority of that energy in their 80% number for the sole purpose of inflating it to make it look better.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#235

Post by tonymet »

you can save way more time and electricity by boiling in a electric pressure cooker . your pasta will be done before the time it takes to boil a cauldron of water on the stove

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#236

Post by piskerpan »

moralestapia wrote: post #170

I've been cooking like this for about 15 yrs or so when I discovered stainless steel and I couldn't recommend them more, if you don't have any please buy some now, they also last for a lifetime. Get some good stuff, the kind of thing that feels heavy on your hand. Stainless steel takes ages to cool down, so I usually cook vegetables in a similar fashion to this "passive cooking" technique, the taste is much better an…

> Stainless steel takes ages to cool down

This also means it takes ages to warm up. It’s fine as long as we’re honest about the fact that we still need to input the same amount of energy at the beginning.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#237

Post by layer8 »

bilekas wrote: post #207

The idea of Passive cooking has always been interesting, but the device itself really feels like an April Fools bit. It's basically just an alarm.. That needs to be paired with a smart phone. Really ?

I wonder how much pasta you have to passive-cook in order to offset the CO2 output of the device’s production and use.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#239

Post by 6177c40f »

I highly doubt that, even if everyone did this religiously, it would have any measurable impact on emissions, given how emissions from residential energy usage make up only a relatively small fraction of all emissions (and emissions from cooking only a small fraction of that). Am I wrong?

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#240

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

bravura wrote: post #20

According to Kenji, you don't even need boiling water to cook pasta: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi... https://www.seriouseats.com/tips-for-better-easier-pasta "Want to get even more crazy efficient? Try soaking pasta in water as your prep your other ingredients. By the time your sauce is ready, you can just add the pasta (along with some of its soaking liquid) to the pan and, with a min…

Or you can get super crazy and cook your dry pasta straight on a pan with sauce, barely adding much water at all, spaghetti all'assassina: https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2022/10/13/spaghetti-allas...
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