God and Nature Spring 2023
across the pond
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Sustainable Cooking
By Mike Clifford
Welcome to the UK, where things are far from tickety-boo. Doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, teachers, train drivers, and lecturers are all on strike. With double-digit inflation, pay is falling in real terms, whilst the price of goods, including food, is rising faster than a Chinese weather balloon. Add the Ukraine conflict into the mix, which, as well as causing a refugee crisis, has meant that electricity prices in the UK rose by 66.7% and gas prices by 129.4% in the twelve months to February 2023.
All the above factors have placed increased interest on the costs associated with cooking. For instance, it is estimated that the fuel needed to make a roast dinner could cost a household as much as £5. In my home city of Nottingham, Fuel Poverty affects around one in seven homes. What’s an engineer with an interest in poverty reduction, sustainability, and cooking to do about this?
On my travels to the Global South, I’ve seen many different ways of cooking. My lab is full of cookstoves from around the world, including my latest acquisition—a Moroccan clay tagine that I managed to bring back from holiday earlier this year. In all my travels, perhaps the most intriguing cooking device that I’ve encountered is the thermal cooker, or Wonderbag (1). I first saw these for sale in Ghana at a clean cooking conference. What attracted my interest the most was that the hotel staff queued up to buy these locally produced items whilst they ignored most of the stainless steel over-engineered stoves that were on display. I’ve also seen thermal cookers for sale in Zambia and South Africa.
Welcome to the UK, where things are far from tickety-boo. Doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, teachers, train drivers, and lecturers are all on strike. With double-digit inflation, pay is falling in real terms, whilst the price of goods, including food, is rising faster than a Chinese weather balloon. Add the Ukraine conflict into the mix, which, as well as causing a refugee crisis, has meant that electricity prices in the UK rose by 66.7% and gas prices by 129.4% in the twelve months to February 2023.
All the above factors have placed increased interest on the costs associated with cooking. For instance, it is estimated that the fuel needed to make a roast dinner could cost a household as much as £5. In my home city of Nottingham, Fuel Poverty affects around one in seven homes. What’s an engineer with an interest in poverty reduction, sustainability, and cooking to do about this?
On my travels to the Global South, I’ve seen many different ways of cooking. My lab is full of cookstoves from around the world, including my latest acquisition—a Moroccan clay tagine that I managed to bring back from holiday earlier this year. In all my travels, perhaps the most intriguing cooking device that I’ve encountered is the thermal cooker, or Wonderbag (1). I first saw these for sale in Ghana at a clean cooking conference. What attracted my interest the most was that the hotel staff queued up to buy these locally produced items whilst they ignored most of the stainless steel over-engineered stoves that were on display. I’ve also seen thermal cookers for sale in Zambia and South Africa.
Thermal cooking—the technique of using thermal insulation to retain heat and cook food without the continuous use of fuel—has the potential to save 70% of energy costs associated with cooking a meal. Hay boxes, or fireless cookers (1) have been used for this purpose for over a hundred years, whilst commercial products such as Wonderbags and locally produced designs are widely available across Western and Southern Africa. Modern developments in this field also include vacuum flasks designed to accommodate steel cooking pots. The basic idea is to bring a pot of food up to temperature on the hob and then to place the pot of food into an insulated bag. Most often when cooking, the energy used to simmer a dish is just replacing the heat that is lost from the sides and top of the pot. Insulating the pot removes the need for additional thermal input, saving energy and saving money. It’s like a slow cooker, but without any power source.
Could thermal cookers be a solution to the UK’s energy crisis? All of this sounds great, until you reach the bottom line. To buy a commercially produced Wonderbag in the UK will set you back about £80, which currently makes the technology unaffordable to most low-income households.
However, there are plenty of videos (2,3) online and guides (4) to help people make their own thermal cookers, and so with the help of a little bit of funding from the University of Nottingham, I’ve teamed up with Tiger Community Enterprises (5) in city-centre Nottingham to run workshops to introduce people to the technology and help them make their own as cheaply as possible. We’re using scrap textiles to make the bags and sheep’s wool for the insulation. Tiger Community Hub delivers projects that offer a wide range of opportunities for people to enhance their own skills, supports the mental health of the community, and works with partners to offer a wide range of activities, so they are an ideal organisation to partner with.
I’m keen to bring some science into the project, so the temperature of the food in the thermal cooking bags will be carefully monitored to ensure food safety and assist with developing a model to predict the time required to thoroughly cook various foods. This will complement joint research being undertaken with my colleagues in Food Science, which aims to measure the starch and gluten content of rice prepared using a thermal cooker, and to compare the results with the starch and gluten content of rice prepared on the hob. There might even be an academic paper in it!
You can read more details about the project (6).
References (All links)
1 The Wonderbag explained.
2. Zero Waste DIY - How to make a Wonderbag :)
3. DIY- Thermal Cooking Bag - step by step
4. FIRELESS COOKER
5. Tiger Community Enterprises
6. How a fabric cooker is helping a Nottingham community save energy and money
Mike Clifford is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. His research interests are in combustion, biomass briquetting, cookstove design, and other appropriate technologies. He has published over 80 refereed conference and journal publications and has contributed chapters to books on composites processing and on appropriate and sustainable technologies.
Could thermal cookers be a solution to the UK’s energy crisis? All of this sounds great, until you reach the bottom line. To buy a commercially produced Wonderbag in the UK will set you back about £80, which currently makes the technology unaffordable to most low-income households.
However, there are plenty of videos (2,3) online and guides (4) to help people make their own thermal cookers, and so with the help of a little bit of funding from the University of Nottingham, I’ve teamed up with Tiger Community Enterprises (5) in city-centre Nottingham to run workshops to introduce people to the technology and help them make their own as cheaply as possible. We’re using scrap textiles to make the bags and sheep’s wool for the insulation. Tiger Community Hub delivers projects that offer a wide range of opportunities for people to enhance their own skills, supports the mental health of the community, and works with partners to offer a wide range of activities, so they are an ideal organisation to partner with.
I’m keen to bring some science into the project, so the temperature of the food in the thermal cooking bags will be carefully monitored to ensure food safety and assist with developing a model to predict the time required to thoroughly cook various foods. This will complement joint research being undertaken with my colleagues in Food Science, which aims to measure the starch and gluten content of rice prepared using a thermal cooker, and to compare the results with the starch and gluten content of rice prepared on the hob. There might even be an academic paper in it!
You can read more details about the project (6).
References (All links)
1 The Wonderbag explained.
2. Zero Waste DIY - How to make a Wonderbag :)
3. DIY- Thermal Cooking Bag - step by step
4. FIRELESS COOKER
5. Tiger Community Enterprises
6. How a fabric cooker is helping a Nottingham community save energy and money
Mike Clifford is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. His research interests are in combustion, biomass briquetting, cookstove design, and other appropriate technologies. He has published over 80 refereed conference and journal publications and has contributed chapters to books on composites processing and on appropriate and sustainable technologies.