Cost of cooking

[AvengedQuince]

I've heard people mention the cost of cooking with regard to how economical various meals are. I don't have a smart meter to easily compare cooking costs. Has anyone done any comparisons?

I physically looked at my meter before and after cooking on a medium gas hob set to 4/10 heat, and it is using 0.027 metric units in 20 minutes, so 0.081 units an hour or about 0.9kwh. Does this sound right? The cost of gas being 7p means it would not cost much at all to simmer something for an hour, especially since you would have the gas turned down lower than 4/10 once at temperature. Have I worked this out right?

Sounds about right to me. Plus, what many people forget is that - in cooking - you are creating heat and therefore warming a room even if only by a few degrees. So cooking by any method will help warm a room - particularly if you open the oven door when cooking is finished to let the heat out.
If you can use the oven for cooking more than one thing - then it is more cost effective.

Yes, I feel much better about using the oven in winter as it is not wasted heat, though more expensive of course being electric. Though I still prefer to cook a pot of something on the hob as I'm sure oven food would cost much more to cook in comparison?

Maybe a slow cooker would work well for you if you like one pot cooking?

I've been considering getting one again. Where I lived before there were power outages so I could get home and find it had stopped, but that seems rare here. I do have a stovetop pressure cooker which means things like bolognese only take 30 minutes once the lid is on, with the burner to the absolute minimum. Though you could maybe do more with a slow cooker?

I tend to do a load of cooking once a week on Sunday, I put several things in the oven at once ( well I did until my oven packed in a few weeks ago 😡 )
But the best tips I can give

1 . When cooking rice cook with the lid on the pan

1. Cook more rice than you need onec the extra is cooled put it in a freezer bag , flaten it so it thinly laid , and freezer. When you want more rice snap of a chunk and drop it in boiling water bring to the boil and your done.

This works with pasta too but under cook it a bit or it goes soggy

3 Slower cooker fans, you can buy slow cooker liners ( the idea been that you don't have to wash your slow cooker ) but if you are only cooking a smallish meal put the ingredients in a bag and secure the top of the bag with a wooden peg , you can get two meals side by side so cook 2 meals at once.

4 . The liners are fairly cheap ( £2ish for 5 ) but they are easy to wash so can be reused.

Have a look at something like the Instant Pot. It plugs into the mains like a slow cooker, but has many different functions.

I have the Duo 7-in-1, which is a combined pressure/rice/slow cooker. As a bonus you can also use it as a steamer, to saute, make yoghurt and warm food. There are others which have even more capabilities.

It's brilliant and currently on deal with Amazon at £59.99, which is £40 less than I paid for mine 9 years ago! Used frequently and still going strong.

I have an aged solid plate electric hob and a smart meter and a half hour of hob cooking is about 30p, whack the oven on too and its more like 50p a meal. And that's on a reasonable tariff, not a prepay meter. I am using the microwave a lot more this winter!

Look into a haybox. I make stock, chilli, bolognaise, stews etc by bringing it to the boil with lid on (Le creuset pot or similar) and wrap it in an old duvet. Leave it all day and it “slow cooks” by itself.
so just the gas or electric to bring to the boil required!
it is still warm for coming home from a long day’s work!

@CrazyChooks

I have a wonderbag - it's brilliant and easier than a whole duvet! Added bonus is good for camping. If anyone is looking for Christmas ideas for someone struggling a bit, haybox or wonderbag is a good idea along with a heavy gauge stock pot

Thanks for the ideas. I am thinking of getting a £20 slow cooker. I am questioning whether the more expensive gadgets are actually economical in how long it might take to get my money back? Summer gas usage (not including standing charge) is maybe £10 a month and that includes the shower and hot water.

We are a low income family but I have been confused by posts I've read in the past suggesting that one pot dinners are not economical for families like ours due to cooking costs. That's why I was questioning my calculations as the cost (on gas) seems negligible compared with the cost of food itself. It would be harder on all electric of course!

Yes you are right. Hob gas burners are rated at about 1kw. So will use 1Kwh (1 unit) per hour of use. If you turn them down they will use a bit less.

The bigger burners use a bit more, the smaller ones a bit less.

Microwaves are probably a lower energy way of cooking than hob cooking, but of course you can't really fry with them. I am not sure whether the 3x cost of electricity in the microwave compared with the hob is balanced out by the lower energy.

Electrics are more expensive obviously. The heat isn't entirely wasted in winter. But there is an argument that you could have replaced the electric heat with gas if you have that alternative, at 1/3 the price.

Everything you run on electric produces heat at a very high conversion efficiency (if the electrical energy does not go into producing heat where does it go?) and pretty much all the heat generated goes into heating your house. So if say you heat your house with electric and heaters that are not on economy 7, there is little difference in electricity cost terms and heating output between heating your house with an electric heater running at 1kW and 20 playstations running at 50W.

Some electrical devices are exceptional, but only in the respect that the heat doesn't end up in your house. For example old style tumble driers pump hot air outside, so a significant proportion of the heat they generate via electric consumption does not warm your house.

Batch cook most things. Like ScottBakula suggested with rice do the same with mashed potato/any meat and sauce options like bolognaise/chilli/curry/soups etc. You can then reheat in a microwave once defrosted.

A slow cooker uses just a few pence an hour. Plug in before you go to work and come home to a hot meal. They are great for stew's with root vegetables and potatoes.

What is cooking? Adding different styles of heat to change food from raw to edible! So economizing means choosing the cheapest style of heat.

Microwaving has been found to be the cheapest way to cook, but not everything can be made that way.

I see you have a stovetop pressure cooker- I’d just use that and forget about a slow cooker. You’re just distributing the heat over different time scales. The greatest advantage of a PC is that you can sear/brown things first then use lowest power (induction 400 watts is plenty) once it has come up to pressure AND cook for shorter times. I often do steamed veg above potatoes, so 2 courses in 1. Use the PC pan for other cooking- the heavy base retains heat better than a thin pan. Even better is cast iron (charity shop?) which you can heat for 5 minutes, switch off for 3. Lids on everything and don’t open the oven if possible. Two frying pans make an excellent mini oven.

Turn things off (oven, pressure cooker, even pasta can take 2 minutes without a flame) before the recipe says. If cooking different dishes and temperatures, turn the oven up in increments, not down. Thawing frozen things is free and reduces cooking times.

And modern ovens are quite economical, like £2 to cook a full roast dinner, because of ticking over. There was a thread recently where someone left the oven on low overnight, woke up to a toasty warm kitchen and only spent about £10!

Another vote for a slow cooker, a £20 one will be fine. I have two in different sizes.

And it doesn't cook just stews, I use mine to cook a whole chicken or a joint of meat.

I have a reproduction of a WWII ministry of food recipe booklet. That suggests cooking on one ring and filling the oven when you cook, so a casserole and a pudding.

If you are on a low income then a small steamer could be useful. If you don't already have one. So you might start boiling some potatoes with a lid on the pan but then add veg to the steamer, put on top of the potatoes and then, sort of, balance the lid on top. It doesn't have to be just veg.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AOMIG-Vegetable-Stainless-Adjustable-Accessories/dp/B0BPNTF9F9/ref=sr_1_33?c=ts&keywords=Steamers&qid=1700622933&s=kitchen&sr=1-33&ts_id=4005092031

I have a Remoska, which is very economical. I got mine from Lakeland.

If you want to know actual costs, I'm sure it's available by googling. Just need to look for good quality data with explanations of how the figure has been worked out, because people post numbers on forums that are complete fantasy and often an excuse to justify ready made food or takeaways 'because cooking costs too much'.

If you want to have 'oven food' and reduce the cost, an air fryer might be a worthwhile investment. In any case, if you do use 'the big oven' try and batch cook rather than putting the oven on for just one thing, and cut down pre-heating time as much as possible.

Just about any recipe ever written that involves use of an oven starts with the instruction 'preheat the oven' which is far too early and will mean that the oven is sitting empty and ready while you are finding ingredients and utensils, peeling and chopping, mixing, etc etc.

Our oven takes less than 5 minutes to get to temperature, so I don't even switch it on until I'm nearly ready to use it. There should be a campaign for recipe writers to move the 'preheat the oven' instruction until later in the recipe.

The problem with that is the initial outlay.

@BarbaraofSeville
If you want to know actual costs, I'm sure it's available by googling. Just need to look for good quality data with explanations of how the figure has been worked out, because people post numbers on forums that are complete fantasy and often an excuse to justify ready made food or takeaways 'because cooking costs too much'.

This is what I was thinking. When we've been struggling I've always cooked a pot of something, usually cheap vegetables with red lentils or some chicken or mince like a curry or chilli. Yet I've seen cooking costs mentioned like this shouldn't be an economical option.

It is expensive. Would it work as a replacement for an oven maybe? I think my pressure cooker would have paid for itself but that was about £40. Slow cooker I am looking at is £20 and I'm hoping that can be used for things you might put in a slow oven for a few hours.

@AvengedQuince If you are using existing recipes then you need to reduce the amount of liquid by at least 1/3 for a slow cooker.

My carer has never bought a cooker, he's been in his flat for a few years now. He had a halogen oven and 2 plug in electric rings to start with, since then he got a microwave and then an air fryer.

But he does have quite a limited diet.

This is interesting, it compares different cooking methods.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/your-guide-to-energy-efficient-cooking

Remember it is black Friday today.

@sashh
Thanks for the link. I already tend to reduce liquid for the pressure cooker as it doesn't lose a lot as steam.

I have this book, it is old, I got it in the 1980s, there is a newer version.

I found it useful because it tells you what to do if things go wrong.

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780716007258/Slow-Cooking-Properly-Explained-Paperfronts-0716007258/plp?cm_sp=plped--2--image