COOKING BY ABSENT TREATMENT
The fireless cooker is primarily a fuel saver. Secondarily, it has
developed into an absent treatment cooker. That is, the food can be
cooking while the lady of the house is airing the baby or at church or
at club entertainments or while the cook is cleaning the kitchen,
laundry and pantry. Thirdly, it cooks thoroughly and longly without the
added expense of fuel or effort.
It was first made with a box and with excelsior and padding but the
manufacturers came to the rescue as they always do to supply a demand
and the comfortable fireless cooker was born.
Its story is short and sweet and to the point. The essential for the
cooker is that it will cook by retained heat. Therefore, it must be
built so that there will be no leakage of heat. For this reason it must
have perfect insulation. The utensils must have covers that are clamped
on so tight that they retain the heat generated by the stove or electric
current. The lining should be non-absorbent of odors or “spill.”
Therefore practice has proven that aluminum, which does not rust and is
easily cleaned, is best for this lining. The linings too, must be
smoother than smooth and be as seamless as it is possible for them to be
made.
For long processes, of course, the heated plates must be able to retain
heat and for this, soap stone and iron plates have been found to be the
most practical.
The cookers can be had with from one to three or four compartments.
Therefore, a whole dinner can be cooked. They claim that you can brown
with them as well as in the roasting oven. Browning can be to some
extent accomplished by an accomplished fireless expert with extra
heating of extra plates and the like, but for real crisp browning it is
as well to take out the food and rapidly brown in the oven.
The best results are gained with the fireless if used in conjunction
with gas, oil and electric stoves. With the coal stove there is a loss
of fuel saving of somewhere around 50% due to the fact that it takes so
much time to get up the fire in a coal stove before the plates are
heated sufficiently to do their work in the cooker.
Therefore, it is cheaper if you are going to use the fireless to any
great extent to have a one burner gas plate on which to heat your plates
for the fireless cooking process.
FIRELESS STOVES
In the chapters on gas and electric stoves, you will find there
mentioned the fact that there are some stoves so built that they have
fireless ovens. That simply means that they are so insulated and
constructed that when the cooking has reached a certain point, the
current of electricity or the gas can be turned off (in some cases
turning itself off automatically) and the rest of the cooking can be
done by the fireless process or on retained heat. This, of course, is
the ideal way, because then there is no extra paraphernalia in the house
and the stove is built so that the back is not bent in stooping to the
low fireless cooker. For this reason, we would suggest that if you have
a fireless, it is best to have it on a shelf built for it or keep it on
a table. Save your back or your kitchen aid where you can, as we have
but one back for every process in life!
The electric fireless cooker is one which has its own connection with
the electric light circuit. It is not a stove or part of a stove--it is
merely a most convenient cooker for which you are not forced to heat
extra stoves or plates. It’s a two-in-one combination. According to
directions you turn on and off the circuit.
COOKING
After you become accustomed to the fireless, you will find that cooking
in it is quite definite and the time and the schedule can be heeded like
clock-work. Do not let the food cool in the cooker, or you will have the
cooker odor to battle with and you will always have olfactory souvenirs.
The cooling and steaming in the box will do this only too well. Air your
utensils and cooker after each usage or your food will have a uniform
flavor which to say the least is most unpleasant.
Remember that it takes longer to cook like this and that you will only
save time by being able to do something else without fear that your food
is boiling over or burning or what not. This cookery takes a little
practice, it is like everything else, a case where practise makes
perfect and where the good utensil and a good understanding work
together for good, while a poor utensil and a slovenly understanding
work together for a little hell on earth, and this is putting it not one
whit too strong.
It is no doubt true that tough cuts of meat are better cooked by the
long process of retained heat; it is no doubt true that cereals are much
more wholesome with the process of retained heat, yet it is doubtful
whether the fireless cooker is ever bought for these reasons.
It is bought, however, to economize time, service and food. There is
less waste of food by the fireless process. You can buy cheap cuts of
food if you have a fireless cooker and enjoy them.
So, the fireless cooker is not an embroidery it is the “bib and tucker”
of culinary labor.