Thermos cooking

Has anyone ever tried thermos cooking?  I found a LOT of you tube videos about this method of cooking.  Supposed to take very little fuel or electricity, cook long low and slow like a slow cooker.  This looks very interesting, especially if living off grid or camping.  Also, there are amazing thermal cooking pots and demos from Australia and China, etc online, looks really worth checking out, anyone else seen or done this, I'd like to  hear your thoughts.  Rice going into my Stanley thermos tonight with cinnamon and raisins for breakfast tomorrow and I'll see how it does (I'm out of oats).

Sounds delicious. Milk, coconut, and cardamom might also be worth considering next time.

I've seen this method used to cook beans, many years ago. I think it worked OK, but the thermos was difficult to clean.

For larger amounts, there's a traditional method using a straw-insulated box.

Well, I used a Thermos last night rather than my stanley.  The cereal was warm 9 hours later, not hot enough to burn.  Tasted fine. 
The opening might be narrow, but the cereal mostly drained out, and it's now sitting full of hot water and dish soap.
If I have trouble removing food, I thought a chop stick or other long implement might help.
Today, I'll try hamburger hash for supper tonight.

I haven't tried it.  But while looking up plans for building a solar cooker I came across all sorts of recipes for slow cooking in jars using the sun.  I liked this site http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/radabaugh30.html

Another name for this type of method is retained heat cooking.  You can use just about anything to insulate the pot of food - I know that campers sometimes use a sleeping bag.  We have an insulated chamber that we call the Hot Box and use it everyday.  It works kind of like a crock pot except all the energy is put in up front instead of a little at a time for a long time.  We like using cast iron pots since they hold heat so well.

Take a look at this site:

http://www.angelfire.com/md3/openhearthcooking/aaFirelesscooker.html

But the third book they list is better accessed at :

http://www.archive.org/details/firelesscookbook00mitcrich

They have a toolbar on the left where you can read it online or better yet, download the whole book as a pdf... or some of the bookreader formats. She also talks about soapstone ovens.... kinda like a haybox, but with a very hot (and large) soapstone slab thrown in.... can bake bread. An earth oven may be just as easy for that use.

For a more up to date try at this take a look at:
http://www.selfsufficientish.com/main/blog.php/2008/06/30/hay-box-cooker-an-old-invention-out-of-new-materials-by-the-self-sufficient-guru-nev-sweeny/

His is really impressive. Take 2 quarts of water to boil, put in haybox for ten hours, temp of water is still at 90C (194F). The best I have managed is 180F 4 or 5 hours later.... hot enough to cook, but not much more. The cooler is a good place to start though.

Wow, I know this is an old thread, but I was cleaning out my kitchen cabinet the other day and found our two thermoses. Thermos cooking is a great idea! So I set about to hunt up some information.







And a whole website dedicated to it ->Thermos Cooking.

We used this basic idea to make rice for our first child when we were going out for the day. It was pretty convenient. There are a lot of thermos style soup containers as well. They work very well.

I cook in a thermos just about every day. I use it for cooking things I'll drain the water out of when they're done, like grain, pasta, beans, and vegetables. I also use it for porridge, soup, chili, etc. And they're great for yoghurt.

I have a 2L one and two 700mL ones, all from the stainless king line of the thermos brand. They have a wide enough opening that I can get my hand inside to clean, but it's tight. Wouldn't work for a lot of people. The 2L one is too tall for me to get down to the bottom before my arm is too big, so I have a nice, sanded, oiled stick hanging above the sink that I use to scrub my luffa around the parts I can't reach. Works well for cleaning standard mouth jars, too.

I absolutely love cooking pasta in a thermos. No more monitoring a simmering pot, even if it is only for a few minutes. Just boil water, dump over dry pasta, set timer, and walk away. The 700mL thermos will accommodate up to 90 grams of dry pasta, which is a good big serving. Any more than that and it's too crowded to cook evenly. I like lentil pasta.

For porridge, an hour or two before bed I put 100g of whatever mix of grains, nuts, and dried fruit I want into the thermos, fill with boiling water, give it a shake, and come back to piping hot porridge in the morning.

Using the rivets as a guide, I know exactly how full I can fill my pots to have the contents fit in each size thermos.

Everyone says to preheat your thermos, but, with the ones I have anyway, I've never needed to.

Is it just me, or does this sound a lot like a smaller version of Hay Box Cooking?

If you agree, that would suggest that many recipes that work will in a hay box system, would work well in a thermos system?

Although a thermos is a more portable/ leak-proof version.

My whole-grain rice takes 45 min to cook after coming to a boil. It sounds as if this would take less babysitting and wouldn't burn if I was a few minutes late.

Jay Angler wrote:Is it just me, or does this sound a lot like a smaller version of Hay Box Cooking?

Exactly! Except with much smaller amounts and probably with possibly different cooking times. The advantage seems to be that a thermos is so portable. Someone could prepare something in a thermos for a hot lunch and take it with them to work. Or pop it into their backpack and enjoy a hot lunch break in the middle of a long hike. Plus, thermoses are readily available, and probably an excellent introduction to this kind of cooking.

This method of cooking has many names,

"Retention heat cooking"    is the one I am familar with.

Several different methods have been used.




Cob ovens use thermal mass and does much similar.

http://saratogajacks.com


One example...

Yeah, haybox cooking and thermal retention recipes could all be used. Any regular recipe, as long as it's liquidy and doesn't need reduction, can be used. So, take your favourite soup recipe, resize it for the thermos, and dump it in.

I read sooooo many reviews of thermal cookers, like the Saratoga jack, before I settled on my 700mL thermos. When I make porridge in my thermos, the porridge is still too hot to touch 12 hours later. It didn't sound like any of the thermal cookers retained heat anywhere near that well. I saw a lot of references to reheating the pot on the stove partway through cooking time.

It's just my husband and me, so a haybox cooker big enough to retain heat the way my thermos does seems like overkill to me. Plus I'd have to keep the stupid thing somewhere. My 2L thermos is big enough for a few servings. It also keeps the food hot enough for long enough that I generally don't need to think about storage. We can have soup for dinner, leave the rest in the thermos, and it's still piping hot at lunchtime the next day.

When cooking is mostly hands off, i don't feel like bulk preparations are as useful. Not for me anyway, with no fridge or freezer. When it only takes three minutes of attention to make rice, I don't mind doing it every day.

And they are great for work lunches. I often put some lentils on to soak one day, boil them up with vegetables and spices the next morning (you only need to boil them 10 min), and have hot curried lentils for lunch.

I've been looking a thermoses lately, with the intent of turning them into charcoal making tlud stoves...
Anyway, even gallon sized thermoses can be had for less than twenty dollars.
This made me really question my canned bean habit.
I have a  freezer and I know how to cook dried beans, but since I'm the only one eating them,  cooking dried beens in bulk and/or freezing  them in individual portions, seemed like too much work.

Putting individual sized portions of dried beans and boiling water into a thermos once a day seems quite manageable.
I also like the idea of a dedicated bean boiler cutting down on the need for dishes.
I am concerned , that this kind of cooking  migjt not be enough to destroy the toxins in the beans.
Any thoughts on that?

William Bronson wrote:
I also like the idea of a dedicated bean boiler cutting down on the need for dishes.
I am concerned , that this kind of cooking  migjt not be enough to destroy the toxins in the beans.
Any thoughts on that?

Supposedly, boiling the beans hard for ten minutes before putting them in the thermos takes care of toxins. I've never tried to verify that information, though. I always soak my beans at least overnight before cooking, and I sometimes sprout them. I never cook them from dry, so I don't know how a thermos would perform at that task.

Here is a good thermos for haybox cooking I remembered using for my submission in the PEP thread for rocket stove/haybox cooking: https://permies.com/wiki/106017/pep-food-prep-preservation/Cook-Grain-Rocket-Stove-Haybox#1156874 It's large and insulates well. It's the old glass kind, so it's easy to clean and they have exceptional insulation properties as long as they still have a good vacuum seal. Definitely worth keeping an eye out for at yard sales and auctions.

I recently purchased a 1 gal thermos for retention heat cooking testing...

RTIC Jug with Handle, Gallon, Large Vacuum Insulated Stainless Water Bottle


That said,  I decided to do this in a way I have not seen anyone do before.....       I decided to create an immersion heater with a glass fish heater.

I have modified the heater 100 watt so it stays on and climbs above the 180 deg to  212..    This it did fine.

Now my next thoughts are.....  hmmm   how long can I cook with this thermos?       Well per the data I collected it has stayed over 166 deg F   for over 6 hours...   with 1 gallon of water,  so it should cook just fine.


Using the fish heater I could boil the water in 4 hours time with 100 watts input,  thus   I could use this in my van  throw in dried beans or rice,   cook  with  1/2 KWH of energy, then eat another 4 hours later.....     If I want a gallon,   1/2 gal in theory should take 2 hours to heat,  then cook....     Still in the testing phase, but I like the results I see so far.