Thermal Cooking – Easy Portable Dinners

Thermal Cooking – The Sports Season Dinner Hour Solution

With all of my kids in school, I have plenty of time to make dinner during the day, but no time to make it at actual dinner time. We’ve got homework, piano lessons, sports and curriculum nights to run to. I’m always looking for ways to prep and cook in advance. That’s why I have fallen head-over-heels in love with thermal cooking!

It’s the best way to make simple meals in advance and have them ready when you are or even take them on the road. A thermal cooker is basically a cordless slow cooker. It’s a giant thermos with a removable inner pot. You cook your food for just a few short minutes in the inner pot on the stove. Then seal it up in the giant thermos, grab it by the handle, and let it cook in its own insulated heat while you drive around town.

Easy Portable Dinners

Going to Great Wolf Lodge for the weekend? Throw some chili in the thermal cooker in the afternoon and open it up piping hot when you get to the hotel 6 hours later. Headed to a dinner-hour-straddling soccer game? Put some chicken and sauce in the bottom pot and rice in the top pot of your thermal cooker and enjoy a warm meal on the sidelines. You don’t have to eat sandwiches or fast food every night. You don’t have to wait until 8pm to eat dinner.

Easy portable dinners are a snap with your thermal cooker.

I have a slow cooker, a pressure cooker, a Kitchen-aid, a Cuisinart, a zoodle maker, and a zester. Any gadget that will make dinner prep easier and more efficient is my best friend. However, my thermal cooker is my favorite kitchen gadget. Here’s why:

1. It’s portable

I love that I can serve up a hot nutritious meal anywhere, and I have. At the beach, in a hotel, at the soccer field, camping, at a rest stop during a road trip. However, my favorite place to use the thermal cooker is at home.

2. It’s ready when you are

Probably the best thing about thermal cooking is that you can do all the work in advance. I make a rice dish, soup, or stew and forget about it. Then, hours later, when we’re ready to eat, the food is ready to be eaten.

3. Your house stays cool

Since the thermal cooker works by trapping heat efficiently, it also keeps your kitchen from overheating. When I make dinner in the thermal cooker, I do all the prep, the 3-5 minutes of cooking, and the clean up just after lunch time. The rest of the day, there’s no sign that dinner is cooking right there on my counter. It’s silent. It’s cool to the touch. There’s no mess.

4. It doesn’t overcook

I enjoy cooking in a traditional slow cooker, but more than once I’ve ended up with food burned to the bottom or overcooked and mushy. The flavors often blend together. That doesn’t happen with the thermal cooker. Because it’s cordless, it doesn’t continue to produce heat. The heat is trapped and insulated and the food cooks evenly, rather than sticking to the bottom or sides of the pot. I’ve never had more gorgeous rice than I get in the thermal cooker, perfect every time.

5. You can cook 2 dishes at once

Because the thermal cooker has two nesting pots that cook simultaneously, you can cook rice in one and sauced meat in the other. Quinoa and curry. Vegetarian and meat-lovers versions of the same dish.

6. It uses less energy

Rather than using electricity all day long like a slow cooker or gas all day long like an oven or range, the thermal cooker only consumes power for as long as it takes to bring to a boil for 3-5 minutes.

7. It’s perfect for emergencies or power failures

The energy efficiency of the thermal cooker makes it a great option for emergencies or power failures. If your power is out for hours or days, you want to use as little energy as possible. So with just 5-10 minutes on your propane stove or BBQ, you can seal up your thermal cooker and have a hot meal slow cooking all day.

Are you psyched? Are you pumped?! How can you not be? Why is everyone in the world not cooking with one of these bad boys? From what I hear, they’re popular overseas. And they’re starting to catch on here with the emergency preparedness crowd. But I tell everyone I know, they should be catching on with moms! Moms need thermal cooking in their lives.

My sister and I geek out over thermal cooking on a regular basis. We even started a blog to share our recipes with each other. You can convert your old favorites for the thermal cooker but there’s a bit of a learning curve. We’d love to show you what we’re making and hear your tips and successes.

Join the revolution and win the dinner hour! Make hot meals a part of your busy life again.

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by Kathryn Thompson via Home And Garden