In this post, I’ll talk about energy efficiency when cooking. Earlier posts in this series dealt with food shopping, food stockpiling, and the effect of a currency change on food storage. In the next post in the series, I’ll talk about energy efficiency when washing up in the kitchen.
First and foremost when trying to save money on food preparation we have to take into consideration that the kitchen is usually the biggest consumer of energy in your apartment or house. Your fridge/freezer and stove/oven are mostly responsible, but your smaller appliances (dishwasher, toaster, coffee maker, microwave, lights, blender, etc) make a small contribution as well.
Refrigerators and Freezers
Never open the fridge door without knowing what you will get and where it is. To manage this, always keep foods in exactly the same place. When you buy a block of cheese, put it in the cheese spot every time. This way you will not waste time with the refrigerator door open. If you’ve ever spent much time in Greece, you are probably familiar with the stereotype that Greeks open the refrigerator door and stand there staring. I have actually seen this happen; I don’t think it’s the norm, but if you recognize yourself: this is an expensive habit.
If you have a hard time with this one – especially with a freezer that is packed full – how about keeping a fridge and freezer inventory on the door? Instead of a simple list, you can make it a diagram, so you can see at a glance where things are, and where to put them when you bring them home from the store. This can also help those in the family who are not so involved in food storage: I’m the one who puts the shopping and leftovers away, so S doesn’t always know where things are. Having a diagram can be a big help. It doesn’t have to be ugly either: you can be creative and do it however you want; you could use images of the various foods instead of words, use your kitchen decor colors, or whatever you want.
Put a thermometer in your refrigerator. You can buy these at the supermarket in the area where they sell ladles and pizza cutters and other kitchen gadgets. They are cheap – about €4 to €5. Most indicate right on the thermometer what a good refrigerator temperature is – personally I aim for around 4 degrees Celsius. You may be able to turn your refrigerator down based on what your thermometer is telling you. Remember that season changes affect the refrigerator!
If your refrigerator has a digital thermometer, you might want to use an analog thermometer anyway. I have heard of the digital ones failing – in fact, beautiful new refrigerators tend to have a lot of problems with their computers, and you may not really be saving money over the long haul if you have to buy a new €700 refrigerator every 5 years. Our refrigerator is the older style (freezer on top, not digital), and I believe is around 9 years old. It does not use an excessive amount of electricity and is very reliable. (My parents still use their fridge from 1975, but I make no claims as to its energy efficiency!)
Keep both your refrigerator and you freezer full at all times. Cold and frozen foods stay cold and frozen much longer when surrounded by other cold and frozen foods, and together they all hold the temperature down. This means that the appliance doesn’t have to turn on nearly as often.
If you don’t have enough food to fill your fridge and freezer, you can stick your dried fruit and flour in there; if you don’t have anything else, you can use bottles of water (leaving a few centimeters on top for expansion for the freezer). The water bottles will perform the same function and water is always good to have around, however based purely on my own experience and what I’ve noticed in my own kitchen, the times that I used water to fill the fridge, it switched on much more frequently than it did when filled with food.
If your freezer is the kind to fill itself with ice, defrost it regularly. I had to do this every few weeks on the island; the freezer was the size of a loaf of bread, and it had issues. I would take everything out of the freezer and refrigerator, unplug it, and chip away with a spatula while holding a blow dryer to it. You have to be careful because the combination of a blow dryer + electricity + water can be dangerous. In winter, you can just let it defrost naturally; of course this will save you the cost of running the hair dryer. You can put food outside to stay cool. Don’t put refrigerator items in sub-zero temperatures, because they will freeze, of course!
If you are buying a freezer (chest or upright), the modern ones often come with an “auto-defrost” feature. This feature cuts down on the energy efficiency significantly. Better to stay away from those.
We always hear this one, but I suppose I might as well repeat it here: make sure your fridge/freezer coils (in the back of the appliance) are clean and not pressed against the wall. They need airflow to function. If they are dirty and closed off, the appliance has to work harder. Likewise if it is vented to the front, make sure the vent is clean.
Don’t put hot food into the fridge or freezer. Let it cool down first. If it’s something sensitive like chicken and you’re worried about bacteria, you can put it in the fridge right away – but be aware that it will increase the internal temperature of your refrigerator for all your food, and the fridge will work harder to cool it. This is especially important if it’s a large quantity of hot food. If you made a bunch of tomato sauce and want to freeze it, it would be silly to put it in a container and pop it in the freezer hot off the stove. Leave it on the counter until it’s room temperature, and then freeze it.
Ovens
Use the air (convection) feature on your oven. Living in Europe, we’re lucky that most ovens come with a fan – if you use this, you can turn the heat down a little, and your food will cook faster! The fan itself burns minimal energy.
In cold weather, always remember to leave your oven door wide open after using it, to warm your home. Some homes actually heat with the kitchen oven, so why not take advantage of the heat you already paid for?
The opposite is true as well: in the summer, reduce oven use as much as possible, use a microwave if you have one, and never leave the oven door open. If you do need to cook in the oven in the summer, cook large amounts of food or several dishes at once, to reduce the amount of overall cooking time over the next several days.
The broiler function in your oven burns a lot of energy, so try to avoid using it.
Pots and Pans
If you are cooking on your stovetop, invest in and use a pressure cooker – xytra taxytitas / χύτρα ταχύτητας – because they reduce your cooking time sharply, often by over 90%, which of course costs you much less. They also use far less water than conventional pots. A pressure cooker is ideal for cooking potatoes, rice, lentils, beans, meats, etc. Anything you would otherwise boil or steam can go in there.
I usually turn mine on only long enough to bring it up to full pressure (usually no more than 5 minutes) and then turn off the stove. Unless it is something that needs a particularly long time to cook, that’s usually enough to cook it perfectly. If it’s something that needs longer, once it reaches pressure, I turn the heat down to medium for another 5 minutes, then turn it off. That’s almost always long enough to cook just about anything, especially if you’ve pre-soaked your dried beans and chickpeas.
I have found parboiled rice on sale (Lidl, €1.79 for 2 kg) for less than regular white rice on sale – so I have a lot of parboiled rice on hand. That cooks even faster and needs barely any electricity at all to cook.
Check that your pans and saucepans are completely flat on the bottom (poorer quality pans will start to produce a curve after a while – the junky pan I bought on the island is morphing into a wok…) and covers the burner exactly. If the outer portion of the burner is uncovered by your pot, you are wasting all that heat; if the outer portion of the pot is not over the burner, it will take longer to cook your food. Pans that are not completely flat on the bottom will also be wasting a great deal of heat. You can experiment with ceramic and other kinds of pans and see what cooks different dishes faster. I prefer a simple nonstick pan for the combination in affordability and versatility.
Alternative Cooking Methods
If you have access to a massina (a wood-burning stove that has burners on top and an oven for food), use this to provide heat to your home and take advantage of the free food prep heat.
If you have a fireplace, you can cook in it! You can cook meat, fish, vegetables, potatoes all right in your fireplace!
In the summer, see if you can cook outdoors. Many apartment complexes in Greece have a brick oven for the residents to use. At least you’re not heating up your apartment further.
Batch Cooking
Cook larger amounts and store the leftovers. You can also cook just the staples and freeze for use in recipes later. Filling your fridge with leftovers is a great way to keep your fridge from working too hard.
Appliance Size
If you don’t need a huge refrigerator, don’t use one. Refrigerators come in all sizes, and Greek apartments for rent often don’t have one when you move in. You may find that what you really need is a large stand-alone or chest freezer to hold your stockpile of food, and a small refrigerator to hold your everday items like fluid milk, cheese, produce, and opened jars and containers. Our apartment on the island had a small refrigerator about waist high (including a shoebox freezer) and I found the refrigerator quite adequate. I wanted a much, much, much larger freezer, of course. A shoebox doesn’t hold very much.
Likewise, you may not need a full-size oven with a 4-burner stove. The first year on the island, we had a very small oven with one regular burner and one tiny burner for making Greek coffee (and nothing else!). The second year, we had the same size oven with a 2-burner stove. Those experiences taught me that I do want 3 burners, but that I don’t need a full-size oven. I bake and use my oven frequently. The fact that I bake bread all the time does not mean that I need a large volume oven. Bread doesn’t take up very much space and I can promise you that my bread tastes delicious, even out of those very small ovens. The oven I have now is a standard Greek oven, which is about 1/2 or 2/3 the size of a standard American oven. I think it’s just right or maybe even a little larger than I’d like.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, keep an open mind to smaller appliances – they usually burn less energy, and as a frequent baker, I appreciate the much faster pre-heat time in a small oven.
If you have the opportunity to have two ovens, two smaller ovens is usually a much better choice than one large one. And while we’re on the subject of building your own dream kitchen, don’t do what my mother in law did and put her wall oven right next to her refrigerator/freezer!
Smaller Kitchen Appliances
Use an electric tea kettle to boil water, rather than the cooktop. If you have a microwave, use it, as they are much more energy efficient than conventional ovens and stoves. If you have a toaster, use that rather than the oven or broiler function.
Those are just a few simple tips that should be able to save you a few €€€ in the kitchen. Next time I’ll talk about hot water, water conservation, and electricity conservation when washing up.
Read my other Frugal Tips articles here:
Part 1: Food Shopping in Greece
Part 2: Building a food stockpile
Part 3: How uncertainty about the Greek currency affects food prices, availability, and storage
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