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Energy Efficient Cooking

Everyone loves home cooking, so do your mom a favor and make your cooking as energy efficient as possible - Mother Earth that is! Everyone needs to eat, but you don't need to eat up a lot of energy to have a hot meal. Check out all the easy things that you can do before you make dinner tonight.

Cooking

Size does matter Before you cook something, ask yourself if you could use a smaller appliance rather than your stove or the oven. A microwave, for example is approximately 75% more energy efficient than an electric stove. The smaller the appliance, the smaller your carbon footprint.
Boiling hot Pop Quiz: True or False - the longer you boil water, the hotter it gets. False! Once water is boiling, it won't get any hotter. So what does this mean for your carbon footprint? Once the water is boiling, turn down the burner. You can still maintain the boil, but with less energy. While you're at it, only boil what you need - boiling more water means a bigger carbon footprint.
Match it up Energy efficient cooking can be as easy as making a match - a match between the size of the pan and the size of the burner. When you use a small pan on a big burner, you waste energy. Make a match and reduce your carbon footprint.
Cut it up Small food cooks faster than big food, so save time and energy by making it small! It doesn't mean that you have to mince everything that you eat, but let's say that you're boiling potatoes. Cutting them into eighths rather than fourths cuts down on your cooking time and your carbon footprint.
Thaw it out Do you know what's for dinner tonight? If you need to thaw something, take it out of the freezer in the morning and stick it in the fridge. While you are at work, your dinner will be safely thawing, contributing to the cold air in your fridge and decreasing the energy you would otherwise use to thaw it later. Planning ahead for dinner can pay off!
Keep a lid on it The next time you're cooking, put a lid on it - on your pots and pans that is! You're food will cook faster which means that you'll save energy and time.

Baking

Keep it closed Every time you open your oven, you can lose as much as one fourth of the heat in the oven. With that said, only open the oven if you really have to. If you want to check on dinner or your favorite dessert, use the oven light and keep the heat inside.
Keep it clean Keeping your oven clean will not only make your mother proud, but it will help you be energy efficient about your baking. When your oven is clean, the metal in your oven can reflect rather than absorb the heat which can help you reduce your carbon footprint.
Only preheat if you have to We make lots of different things in our ovens from dinner to desserts, but not everything really needs the oven to be preheated before it bakes. Casseroles, most meat dishes, frozen favorites like tater tots don't really need the oven to be piping hot when they go in. However, if you're making bread, pastries, or other tasty baked goods, preheating is the way to go.
Glass or ceramic is the way to go Metal is a great material for conducting heat, but ceramic and glass does a much better job of holding it. When you bake with ceramic or glass pans, you can turn the heat down in your oven by about 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
Make a little more When you finish your favorite home cooked meal, do you ever have the feeling that it would be great just to have a little bit more? Next time, make a little bit more. It's always more energy efficient to heat up leftovers in your microwave rather than make a whole new meal in the oven.

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