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Barilla passive cooker

barilla.com

221–230 of 528 posts

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#221

The claim: reduces CO₂e emissions by up to 80%* The asterisk: water boiling phase excluded When I boil pasta, I use full heat to get the water boiling, drop in the pasta, then let it come back up to a boil, then drop the temperature as low as possible to keep a slow boil going--about medium-low. Guesstimating that the boil takes about as long as the time to cook the pasta, I'd say that the pasta cooking portion only…

You can also use a lot less water than is standard: just enough to cover the noodles. Kenji Lopez-Alt has written about this a bunch [1]. Noodles cooked that way were indistinguishable in his testing. He's also discussed it on his cooking youtube channel, which I recommend to anyone. For example, a 3-ingredient macaroni and cheese [2] in which he discusses the noodles at 0:40-ish.

[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWge-2jT9ZQ

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#222
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm American, and I often heat up leftovers with a toaster oven or on the stove. For some foods it gets better results.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#223
post #123

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Alec, of the Technology Connections YouTube channel, shows it's not just energy saving, but faster and cleaner. Even with US outlet power limits a kettle will boil a volume of water much more quickly than a gas stovetop, and my indoor CO2 sensor won't spike by hundreds to a thousand PPM of CO2. While the time savings is modest, if you have an electric kettle it's a no brainer to prefer that over gas. Though induction…

Your gas stove will likely dramatically outperform an 1800W electric heater if you use a proper pot: https://turbopot.com/ I would still rather use a nice induction range, but it is possible to get decent efficiency out of gas.

There's still a huge amount of energy that gets dumped out into the kitchen by any non-induction cooktop, no matter what pot you use.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#224
post #198
post #171

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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.

It feels like much plastic since you touch each one, but it's a very tiny amount if you weigh your monthly usage.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#225
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of Americans drink kind of shit coffee as well, they just largely drink it from drip coffee makers. Alternative brewing methods like french press, aero press, pour over, etc. is starting to become more popular but is definitely still not a predominant way of doing it. And even then, the really bougie people will just have an instant boiler tap in their kitchen instead of taking up counter space with something th…

Drip coffee is pretty good, good taste and caffeine content while being pretty simple to brew, a decent machine is cheap as well. It's just a method, the beans you use are what actually count.

The worst part of a standard American drip coffee machine is cleaning it. Too many different nooks and crannies to get gross.

I find pour over to be one of the easiest methods in amortized time. It takes three minutes to make a cup but the clean up time is only another 30 seconds—-throw away the paper filter and rinse the dripper.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Keurig machine is just an electric kettle with an electric pump inside of it.

Can it be used like a kettle - ie can it rapidly heat up a quart of water without a coffee residue taste? No, it cannot. Just because they both heat water doesn’t make them similar.

Pretty much. I used my keurig this way for a few years until i realized I'm really not using pods and am only using it for hot water to make tea (via normal steeping). If you brew coffee and then use it for something right after I don't recall there being much coffee taste, but you could probably run a small cup setting to flush things in the pod area a bit if needed.

I've since switched to a Zojirushi water boiler which I adore, especially after learning my keurig wasn't getting hot enough to really brew the tea well.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#227
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drip coffee is pretty good, good taste and caffeine content while being pretty simple to brew, a decent machine is cheap as well. It's just a method, the beans you use are what actually count.

The worst part of a standard American drip coffee machine is cleaning it. Too many different nooks and crannies to get gross. I find pour over to be one of the easiest methods in amortized time. It takes three minutes to make a cup but the clean up time is only another 30 seconds—-throw away the paper filter and rinse the dripper.

Those suck, I use a Moccamaster that's been beating around for at least some 30 years. Bought it second hand and never had an issue in the past 15 years, reliable, easy to clean. It's a delight of design based in functionality for me.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#228

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…

Strange.. every household and even hotel room I've ever been in North America had a kettle. I only went to an Airbnb once that didn't have a kettle, so I Amazon'd one and just left it there.

In the hotels, that’s not a kettle. It’s a coffee maker. If you choose to not put coffee in it, that’s up to you.

(Us Americans tend to optimize for coffee over tea. If something also works for tea, that’s a happy coincidence, but not intentional.)

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#229
post #156

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.

Anecdote of one: I am an American that does not own a microwave and does own an electric kettle. We are legion.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this in lots of 'how to boil an egg' guides, where cooking time matters. When explaining it on the internet, the best way is to dump the egg into boiling water, and drain and cool with cold tap water after X minutes, because it removes other variables. Buuuuut, if you learn your pot and water volumes and starting water temperatures and heating rate, you can cook your egg faster by starting with cold water, and…

Starting with cold water, the cooked mass is heated more evenly, since the heat has more time to transfer to the core. For potatoes that's the recommended way, but if you want the eggs yellow to be soft, this might make it harder. I only read this today, and I recommend anyone to just experiment and give new ideas some attempts.

The trick to fix that is to submerge the eggs into boiling water for a minute. Pull them out. Wait for another minute. Put them back into the water and complete cooking.
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