Wonderbag, thermal cooker- powerless cooking

Anyone have personal recipes for cooking in a thermos?

 

I've used a thermal cooker for years now as well as having used the wonder box and I also have a Rocky cooker as pictured earlier in the thread and have used it too.

Any of these forms of retained heat cooking are a great way to cook and we seldom go a week in our house without using our thermal cooker in one form or another as it is used often for soups, stews and making yogurt. We've also used it to keep home made ice cream cold all day while we are out picnicking.

There are a few places on the internet you can find recipes, information and places to purchase:
The Thermal Cooker Thermal Cooking Weblog | The place for any retained heat cooking method
http://youtube.com/getpreparedstuff
Mr D - the thermal cook | Mr D's Energy Saving Thermal Cooker the Modern HayBox from the Home of Thermal Cooking
Thermal Cookware
http://www.GetPreparedStuff.com

I've run test comparing various retained heat cooking methods and most do a great job of cooking and keeping the food inside hot and above safe temperatures for many hours. There are some factors that are important to follow as it's critical to have enough food mass inside the cooker in order to hold onto enough heat to cook and keep food warm. If you keep the pots at least 3/4 full of food you shouldn't have many problems after bringing the contents up to a boil and then depending on the food type letting it simmer for a minute upto 30 minutes before putting it into the thermal cooker's outer pot or into the wonder box or other thermal insulating materials. The greater the food mass the longer it will stay hot. For example the temperature of a gallon of water brought up to boiling (~200F) and then placed inside the Saratoga Jacks 5.5L thermal cooker would stay above 145F for 11 hours. It would stay in the "cooking" temp range above 170F for upto 5 hours.

Water is a very good retainer of heat so not all foods will have the same results as water will but it does show that retained heat cooking can do the job of cooking and do it safely.

If you've stored any of the freeze dried or dehydrated meal buckets or packaged recipes a thermal cooker is the perfect way to prepare and cook these meals. I've used a thermal cooker many times to simply bring the needed amount of water to a boil on any heat source and then mix in the freeze dried or dehydrated recipes and then place it in the cooker and close the lid. In about 30 minutes it's ready to eat and if I need to wait before eating it's still pipping hot 5-8 hours later and the food isn't mushy or over cooked.

The red Rocky cooker as pictured earlier is no longer made. I have a friend that worked with them back in the 80's and the product and company is as other have said "defunct". The current crop of thermal cookers available are a good substitute but the Rocky did have one advantage which is the round stone rock that you could heat up in many different ways and use as a radiator to both cook and keep hot the contents of what ever is in the pot on top of it. It gave the Rocky one capability that I wish my thermal cookers had which was to be able to bake bread. Now, I can cook bread in a thermal cooker by using a smaller sealed pan and placing it on a trivet inside the thermal cooker in about 5 inches of boiling water. In about 2 hours you will have a nice crustless bread but the size of the bread tin I can place inside limits the size and amount of the bread. The Rocky however, lets me put a whole lot of dough inside filling up the inner pot and with the hot rock under it cooks the bread just fine in a few hours. Again, it's a mostly crustless bread as the low temperatures don't brown the bread but it is very soft and moist when done so it does need to stand for a while to stiffen up.

Using any of these retained heat cooking methods is also an excellent way to conserve fuel consumption. If you've stored, butane, propane, kerosene, white gas, wood, pellets or anything else to cook over, the thermal cooker or other similar methods will help those fuels last much longer as you only need to use the fuel long enough to get the food to a boil and then simmer it a short time before you shut off the fuel and let the food finish cooking inside the thermal cooker. For example, a pot of pinto beans would normally need to simmer on a stove for 4-6 hours to cook well but using a thermal cooker it takes less than an hours worth of fuel to bring the pre-soaked beans to a boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes before letting the thermal cooker finish the process. That's a big savings in the amount of fuel used for just one meal!

Retained heat cooking isn't a new method of cooking as there are old fireless cookers that were made in the late 1800's that worked very much like a thermal cooker and even more like the Rocky cooker. You can still find these old fireless cookers on ebay for sale but the price maybe a little high compared to a thermal cooker or wonder box. On the thermalcook.com blog there are links to old recipe books for fireless cookers you can download free in PDF form and use in thermal cookers, wonder boxes etc. They are very handy too because the recipes are all the made from scratch type so you won't be pointed to ingredients that are brand specific.

One thing on my wonderbox experience is that I found after a number of uses that the cloth wonderbox materials and styrofoam beads inside can develope a musty smell as water and moisture is always present when cooking and permeates the cloth materials. It's important to dry the wonderbox out and shake it up ever so often when idle to keep it aired out and dry.

 

Many, many great ideas here. But I want one of everything now.

 

Boat people understand the value of conserving fuel - and not cooking in a hot galley!

Thermos Cooking (has bean recipe)

Cooking Beans in the Thermos Cook and Carry Thermal Cooker

Grains & Beans Cooking without Electricity

http://thriftyliving.net/2008/09/07/cooking-with-stanley/ (talks about a salt-water soak before cooking)

and finally - How to Cook with Dried Beans I'm lazy, cooking beans in a crock pot is da bomb....

 

This book is free on amazon kindle with prime. Its a good book with the basics of thermal cooking, how to modify recipes and tips on buying thermal cookers. Has some good recipes and she even bakes bread in her thermal cooker. A very nice read.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018HSNFC6/?tag=survivalmonke-20

 

I've wanted a wonderbag for years, and just ordered one from Amazon in subscribe and save for $60. When it arrived I cancelled the subscription so they wouldn't send me another. I look forward to trying it out.

 

Welcome to SM, nomifyle. Say hello in the new member introductions forum New Member Introductions so that folks here know of your arrival. Let us know a little about yourself (without compromising OPSEC), and what your interests are here. Cheers from chell.

 

Not quite as portable, but they've been roasting pigs, in pits dug into the ground, for years now. Just takes getting enough hot coals going, so that when the pig is lowered in, and covered up, you retain enough heat to finish cooking it. Supposedly how they do the roasted pigs for a luau, in Hawaii.....though I'm not sure that any of the tourists would really know the difference!

 

Found more interesting recipes for thermal cooking
thermalcooking

loved the idea of 'kitchen in a box'



This is a link to a pdf of a 'Duplexing Stove" which I found fascinating
https://ia802609.us.archive.org/21/items/duplexcookbookco00durhiala/duplexcookbookco00durhiala.pdf
or you can order it on amazon
The Fireless Cook Book: A Manual of the Construction and Use of Appliances for Cooking By Retained Heat : With 250 Recipes (Cooking in America): Margaret Mitchell: 9781429011464: Amazon.com: Books

or another fireless cooker book

https://ia601407.us.archive.org/5/items/highlivingrecipe00mcla/highlivingrecipe00mcla_bw.pdf

MORE RESOURCES
Fireless Cookers | The Thermal Cooker Thermal Cooking Weblog

 

Excellent resources @Ganado thanks for bumping this thread. I love this concept of fireless cooking. My first attempt was not successful but I will see if I can find an easier recipe.

 

Ideally ,
It is a good practice to try different methods of capturing solar heat .
Successful or not they teach you something and hopefully extend you skill in that area .
The scope of solar potential use is tremendous, and as old as time and barely realized .

"A lot to be said for double glazing." Like the double glazed windows in your home.
The first to hold the heat established.
And the second to prevent the heat from being washed away by the wind out side.
Much as I've been sharing this with people, it seems to go in one ear and out the other.
But it is s system that works .

 

Thermos Cooking Tips, Reviews, Recipes and More
If you want to learn how to cook healthy food while saving yourself time and energy, you’ve come to the right place.

It’s Easy
You don’t have to stand over the stove stirring food all day.

It’s Efficient
Using a thermos is the most fuel efficient way to cook. Period.

It’s Healthy
Cook with healthy whole grains without the time and trouble.

Thermos Cooking Basics

• Cooking Whole Oat Groats
• Cooking Pasta
• Cooking Cracked Wheat
• Cooking Steel Cut Oats
• Cooking Quinoa

Additional Recipes

• Mediterranean Tabouli Salad
• Wheat Berry Salad with Grapes and Feta Cheese
• Bread Pudding
• Cooking Pasta
• Cooking Whole Wheat

Equipment

• Choose a Thermos
• Electric Kettle Reviews

From the Thermoscooking link posted above

 

The Duplex cook book, containing full instructions for cooking with the Duplex fireless stove
This book is in archive.org and has some fascinating pictures and recipes

https://ia802609.us.archive.org/Boo...ookbookco00durhiala_0006.jp2&scale=2&rotate=0

 

My apologies at all, I failed to mention that when cooking with a Thermos (TM) vacuum flask, a long, thin spatula - one that is at least 6 inches longer than the flask is tall should be the first 'kitchen aid' purchased before stating on the Thermal cooking adventure. Rice and beans are easy to cook but can be the very Devil to completely empty from a flask.
I've also made a 'cozy' from Refectix insulation, tho it may not be needed at your place. For cooking outdoors, it is a real help.

The second 'kitchen aid' item would be a good stiff bottle brush - again, with a long handle to ensure you have the ability to scrub out the interior of the flask prior to reuse. After a good scrub and rinse, I often dump boiling water in mine, then use the slightly cooled water to make a cuppa.

 

Today is the first day I've seen this thread. I came to mind that the Yeti type cooler that is all the rage now should work pretty well for this.

 

Not a necro - just more stuff



No bake bread...uses boiling water and a haybox.


Cooking with solar oven vs Wonderbag...

 

im still looking for a good pattern to make a square thermal haybox... a collapsible one

 

@Ganado how "collapsible" does this need to be? Would 6 insulated panels with a way to assemble before use - say with pins - work for you? How large does your haybox need to be - 8 Qt pot? Stock pot?

 

Cooking - Wonder Box

pattern for a Wonderbag - I couldn't find any knock apart box cookers.