Fireless Cooker

By Sara:

When I traveled to Kenya for the Farming God's Way training, they also talked to us about "fireless cookers" that you can use to reduce the amount of fuel used for cooking.  Although it sounded amazing, I didn't want to tell other people about it until I tried it myself.  Well, I tried it and it definitely worked.

Technically, the cooking isn't "fireless" because you need to start the food cooking before you put it into your fireless cooker, where it continues to cook without fire.  This is actually a technique that people used in the past, not something new.  Some people call it a haybox cooker.  Anyway, I used a giant basket and crumpled up a lot of paper, then packed it into the basket to make a layer of insulation about five inches thick.  Then, I put some towels in to fill in all the space between the paper and the edges of my cooking pot.

Here's where the fire comes in.  I took the pot back out, put dry chickpeas in it, and let them soak overnight.  In the morning, I put them on the stove, brought them to a boil, and let them cook for 10 minutes.  Then, I took the pot off the stove, covered it, and fit it snugly back into the fireless cooker.  Like so:

I covered the pot with more blankets and towels for insulation and left it for four hours.

When I opened it up after that time, my chickpeas were fully cooked and still very hot!

So I decided to try rice too.  The rice I brought to a boil and then simmered it for five minutes.  Then, I put it in the fireless cooker for 2 hours (I think it would have been done in 1 or 1.5 hours, but it was 2 hours until dinner, so I just waited until then).  And then, there was the cooked rice!

The beauty of this is not only that it saves hugely on fuel (if you can cook beans for 10 minutes instead of for 2-3 hours), but it also is a way that someone could start food cooking before going to work in the garden.  Then, by the time they got back home, food would be ready, instead of having to wait to cook it after getting home.