Thermal cooking

Success!  

20 years ago or so my oldest sister told me you could cook beans, (in my case, pinto beans,) in a Stanley thermos.  I never forgot what she told me but I never tried it until today; and guess what?  It's true!  I did my first cup of beans today in a very high quality thermos that I have.  I have the thermos to take to work to keep my food hot, which it does, because I hate cold hot food.  Recently I was perusing various sites about thermal cooking so I decided to give it a whirl.  Thinking about this it is really ideal.  You don't have to keep an eye on a boiling pot and you don't have to worry about over cooking the food, I've done this a time or two; and you can do this with almost anything you want as long as there is lots of boiling hot water in your recipe.  That's why I opted for beans on my first go around.  This kind of cooking, I imagine, can work while camping too, or almost any outdoor activity.  The secret is you have to bring the liquid to a boil then add it to the preheated thermos.  Vacuum stainless steel is superb.  I think plastic would not work at all.  I think the biggest boon is probably that you don't have to have something cooking on the stove-top for hours.  You just have to heat it up then pour it into the thermos.  If it's not quite done, then just reheat in your pan and pour it back into the still hot thermos.

I cook in a thermos pretty much every day now. I've found preheating is unnecessary.

I dump boiling water over grain in a small thermos before bed and have hot porridge in the morning. If I want fluffy grain, I set a timer and drain the water out before it gets mushy.
I boil beans or chickpeas for ten minutes, dump into my big thermos and have perfectly cooked beans a few hours later.
I make soup, chili, curry, etc.
I bring potatoes, beets, etc. to the boil, dump into thermos, drain an hour or two later.
I dump boiling water over dry pasta, set a timer, and walk away.
I guess yoghurt isn't cooking, but a thermos sure makes it easy.

One thing I love about using my big thermos for soup etc., is that I can make a batch early in the day, we can eat some for dinner, leave the rest in the thermos, and it's still hot for lunch the next day.

I've got a super basic curried lentil thing I can whip together in a few minutes in the morning before work. By lunchtime, it's cooked and I don't have to wait my turn for the microwave before I can start eating.

Pasta is super handy to cook before work, too. While the pasta is in the thermos, I chop up some veg, make a dressing, and mix it up in my lunch container. By the time I've done that, the pasta is cooked and I can dump it in with the veg. Ten minute pasta salad. My favourite pasta is the 100% red lentil stuff you can find pretty much anywhere now.

I love love love my thermoses! I've got the thermos brand ones from their thermos king line. The tops are big enough I can get my hand inside to clean them. I can't reach the bottom of my big 2L one cause my forearm won't fit, though.

Jan White wrote:
I boil beans or chickpeas for ten minutes, dump into my big thermos and have perfectly cooked beans a few hours later.

Patrick - depending on the beans this boiling can be an important step. This thread has a discussion about toxins naturally present in some beans and how to make them safe.

I cook in a thermos pretty much every day now.

I couldn't figure out how to use the quote option for this small blurb, so I cut and pasted it.

Success #2

Rice pilaf.  It worked like a charm.  I will keep moving forward with this.

Kind regards,

Marco

This thread convinced me to buy a new thermos. The few I already had are the wrong kind for cooking in. They can barely keep coffee warm for an hour, and nothing stays hot in them more than a few minutes.

I like cooked cereals, but I prefer the texture they get with long cooking times. Long cooking times are hard to get because of how easily thick cereal can scorch. I had been making them in a double-boiler, but that gets really inconvenient. I hope cooking them in a thermos works better!

Would often cook cereals like barley in a wide-mouth Stanley thermos.  Many years back invested in an actual thermo-cooker made by Zojirushi for efficient cooking of larger volumes.  It's great for stews and soups.  It has an internal pot you heat on the stove then slide it into a vacuum-insulated sleeve once it's up to temp.  Works great if I can plan ahead at breakfast to throw some stuff in the pot for dinner -or overnight for tomorrow's lunch.

Marco Benito wrote:
Success #2

Rice pilaf.  It worked like a charm.  I will keep moving forward with this.

Kind regards,

Marco

What water to rice ratio did you use for the pilaf?  When I tried to use my usual 1.5 or 2:1 absorption method, the rice cooked unevenly. So now I add extra water and drain the excess.

John Skaggs wrote:Would often cook cereals like barley in a wide-mouth Stanley thermos.  Many years back invested in an actual thermo-cooker made by Zojirushi for efficient cooking of larger volumes.  It's great for stews and soups.  It has an internal pot you heat on the stove then slide it into a vacuum-insulated sleeve once it's up to temp.  Works great if I can plan ahead at breakfast to throw some stuff in the pot for dinner -or overnight for tomorrow's lunch.

How well does your zojirushi retain heat? I opted for a thermos because the reviews I read of thermal cookers said they only retained real heat for 7-8 hours or so. Stuff in my 2L thermos is still too hot to touch 24 hours later - if it's full. Partially full loses heat quicker.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:
I like cooked cereals, but I prefer the texture they get with long cooking times. Long cooking times are hard to get because of how easily thick cereal can scorch. I had been making them in a double-boiler, but that gets really inconvenient. I hope cooking them in a thermos works better!

I like the long cooked texture better, too. You just have to figure out the right measurements for your size of thermos.

I have a 710mL one that I use for porridge. For millet, steel cut oats, and rice I put 100g of grain in and fill the thermos with boiling water. For barley, buckwheat, quinoa, and rye, it's a little too much water and it doesn't really feel like porridge. Even the rice is kind of on the edge.  For those grains, I'll swap out 20% or more for something with some more thickening properties like oats, amaranth, teff. I almost always do a mix, except for millet which is too delicious to mix with anything else 😃

Jan White wrote:

How well does your zojirushi retain heat? I opted for a thermos because the reviews I read of thermal cookers said they only retained real heat for 7-8 hours or so. Stuff in my 2L thermos is still too hot to touch 24 hours later - if it's full. Partially full loses heat quicker.

It's pretty efficient. Though not quite as insulating as a Stanley thermos flask.  The lid is where I reckon it looses some heat -being of a largish area and not vacuum-insulated.  But it works plenty well to cook a meal overnight and still be hot in the morning.  Especially if full -more thermal mass.