Great Green Idea: Green Eating: Green Cooking - Not Just Your Veggies Can Be Green

Green Cooking - Not Just Your Veggies Can Be Green

You may not realize how much energy you are burning up unnecessarily in your kitchen. Saving energy goes beyond keeping money in your pocket. Being responsible to the environment means cutting back on using energy any way possible.

Using less fossil fuel while you are cooking is good for the planet and everyone that lives on it. The following tips will help you to decrease the energy you use in your kitchen and help your kitchen to be a greener place to work!

One Pot Meals

Letâ€™s talk about something that was very popular in the nineteen fifties that is still a great way to feed your family today and use less energy. One pot meals, think casseroles and crock pot meals. Using one pot to cook up a meal means that you do not have to have multiple burners on the stove going at once. You would be surprised to see how much you can save by simply using some of the great one pot meal recipes that are available twice a week.

Close the Door

There are two major foes to making your kitchen green. The hot and the cold, to heat something up require energy and too cool something down also requires energy. The goal is to not waste either resource. Opening your refrigerator less will burn less energy. Eat foods that do not have too be cooled or heated. Eat more foods raw (vegetables and fruit). The less food you buy that have to be cooled or heated the greener your kitchen will be.

Tuesday is Bake Day

Before the modern conveniences and labor saving devices made the scene people would do their baking on one specific day of the week. Not only does this consolidate the work load but it is super energy smart. Use your oven to bake more than one thing at a time so that you are using the heat of the oven efficiently. Many baked goods freeze wonderfully so if you can bake as much as you need to on one day a month or week you should. Use the burners on your stove efficiently as well. Make sure the pot that you are using is not too small for the burner it is sitting on. Using too small pots wastes heat!

Make Bigger Batches

It will take you the same amount of energy to double your recipes and halve it up. You can freeze the excess for use at a later time. Using energy in your kitchen efficiently can be as simple as making a bigger batch of food each time you cook so that you do not have to repeat the process over and over. It is more efficient to reheat leftovers than it is to re-cook the same recipe using the same amount of energy.

Get your kitchen green one step at a time. Make one small change a week and before you know it your kitchen will be as green as your veggies!