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Barilla passive cooker

barilla.com

251–260 of 528 posts

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#251
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd gladly take an electric kettle over what I had to use the last time I was in an American hotel room to heat water, which was the bedside drip coffee maker. Water heated through that still tasted like bad coffee.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#252

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.

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…

My wife drinks tea, I drink coffee. Both of us grudge the time needed to heat water in our 120V American electric kettle compared to European 240V kettles. I^2 makes a big difference.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#253

How you like to cook pasta aside. This is so dumb. No one is going to solve the climate crisis with not boiling the pasta while certain companies is reaponaible for basically all emissions. What is the word for this? When you try socialise problems like this to try shift blame? I’m still surprised how many people don’t know thar “climate footprint “ is invented by one of the bigger oil companies in a similar campaign…

Gotta hand it to Barilla's marketing department. They found a way to seem climate conscious talking about cooking pasta

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#254
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always wanted some kind of "collar" that I could put around a burner to try to direct that excess heat back into the pan/pot.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#255
post #232

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 f…

You can certainly cook pasta starting in cold water, it just makes the timing more uncertain because you don't have a standard starting condition. It's nice because you can use just enough water to cover.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#256
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had an electric kettle growing up, but nobody else I knew/know has one. I don't know why, they're extremely practical, don't take up much space, and don't cost much money unless you get a fancy temperature-controlled one.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#258
post #232

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 f…

[deleted]

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#259

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…

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

> A better way to save energy is to use an electric kettle to get the water up to boiling.

An even better way (and one that also saves cleanup) is to use an electric pressure cooker like an InstantPot to cook the pasta

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#260

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…

My wife drinks tea, I drink coffee. Both of us grudge the time needed to heat water in our 120V American electric kettle compared to European 240V kettles. I^2 makes a big difference.

We use a hot water pot at home, a Zojirushi. Never have to bother with hot water, it's always available and the thing uses a negligible amount of electricity (we're almost entirely on solar anyway, so it's a moot point for our family) comparable to all of our other appliances.
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