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Lyndsey Young, The Queen of Easy Green, finds more ways to save money and energy around the kitchen.

 
Breaking News: Lyndsey, the Queen of Easy Green, has been short listed for Red’s Hot Women Awards, sponsored by Red magazine. She’s in some pretty impressive company too. Click here to find out more

Our kitchens are energy-use intensive.  When energy was cheap, few of us gave much thought to our energy-wasting habits in the kitchen. Now it turns out that a lot of things we’ve all done thoughtlessly, every day, eat away at our best energy efficient habits elsewhere around the house.
 
Correcting those bad habits –  to reduce bills and cut our carbon footprints – can be easier than you think. In fact, a lot of kitchen energy saving involves taking simple common sense steps and doing things we probably already know but have forgotten. Here then, some reminders of easy ways to use less energy and save money around the kitchen.
 
1. Suit the tool to the task

Melting butter or heating cooked foods with a microwave uses less energy than firing up the cooker. And electric kettles are not just for cups of tea; they’re also more energy efficient and faster than the hob for bringing water to the boil for cooking.
 2. Use the right size pot

Go for the smallest pot you can use for the task. Heating less surface area uses less energy. But make sure the pot fits the burner. When you cook with a small pot on a large burner, you end up heating the air instead of your food. Heating a 6 inch saucepan on an 8 inch burner wastes 40% of the energy used.
 3. Give the fridge a break

Be honest; how often do you put hot food in the refrigerator even though your mother told you never to do that? Modern fridges are so efficient at chilling hot foods, it’s easy to forget how hard they have to work and the extra energy they need to do it.

 4. Cover that pan

Putting a lid on a saucepan conserves energy in two ways. It holds hot vapour against the surface of the food, bringing it up to cooking temperatures more quickly. And it keeps the heat where it’s needed for cooking instead of allowing it to dissipate in the air.

 5. Double up

Think of ways to use the same energy for twice as many tasks. Drop a few eggs for the kids lunchtime sandwiches into water you’re already boiling for pasta or rice. Make room the oven for tonight’s dinner and tomorrow night’s casserole. Make an impromptu steamer out of a metal sieve and a lidded saucepan. Cook rice or boil spuds in the bottom while you steam fresh vegetables or fish in the top.

 6. Clean the oven door

It may be a hard job but it’s worth doing if a glass door you can see through prevents you from repeatedly opening the oven to check on cooking food.

 7. Cook when it’s cooler

Leave big cooking tasks – bread and cake baking, making soups and stews to stock the freezer – for the coolest part of the day. In summer it means you’ll use less energy for air conditioning or cooling fans. In winter it warms up the house.

 8. If you can’t stand the heat

Take advantage of cooking heat to warm nearby rooms. Instead of throwing open a window to dissipate the heat of the kitchen, turn down the thermostat.

 9. Unplug the lights

Quite a few household appliances stay on standby unnecessarily. Turn off microwave ovens, washing machines and dishwashers, televisions and music systems at the power point. The energy used by all those little red glowing lights (and the standby power they signal) can really add up.

 10. Air dry dishes

If you use a dishwasher, cut its energy use substantially by opening the door after the wash and drain cycles and letting the hot dishes dry naturally.

What About You?

Have you got some brilliant, energy saving, money saving tips for the kitchen? We’d love to know how you save and share it with the energyrethinking community. Just add your great ideas to this page by commenting below.