Styrofoam is stable upto 79 C / 175 F. But is it completely safe, especially from offgassing?
The Fireless Cooker That Feeds
41–44 of 44 posts
Re: The Fireless Cooker That Feeds
#42No post body was provided.
Re: The Fireless Cooker That Feeds
#43Explaining this just to make sure I get it. When we cook we're bringing up food to a certain temp, then maintaining it at that temp till it's done cooking. If we could perfectly insulate it, then it could hold that temp as long as we want without being on the fire. So the only energy input is getting it hot -- after that it's cooking on its own. So this is trying to approximate that by insulating the pot. I always so…
You're not wrong - once the food is at the right temperature, it's done. You can hold food at the "right" temperature for a long time, but if you go above it, it'll over-cook. There's a few ways to heat food up, the most common of which is to heat the vessel to well above the right temperature and wait for the food to come up to the right temperature. The cooker linked takes advantage of this method since it is fine…
counterpoint: sous vide
Re: The Fireless Cooker That Feeds
#44When cooking, the rate of heat needed to maintain the same temperature is exactly the rate at which the food is cooling. So heating up a pot and insulating it is roughly equivalent to heating up a pot and continually heating it to maintain the same temperature. If we changed the culture of cooking to recognize this, we could save a lot of energy.
The pot in this "cooker" is dropping in temperature. Slowly but surely, since no insulation method is perfect against heat transfer.
True. But if the rate of heat loss is low enough, then it doesn't much matter.