Greener Alternatives to Stove and Oven Cooking

[misisgreen]

Your stove uses plenty of energy to cook even the most simple of meals. To help save on your energy bill, try using your microwave, toaster, and convection ovens to tackle some of your meals. While microwave ovens do actually use a lot of energy, the cooking time is significantly shorter than using the stove or conventional oven. So, the energy use will be reduced by two-thirds. Newer “rapid cook” ovens that combine microwaves with halogen lights or convection will cut cooking time and improve food quality compared to the typical microwave oven. Cooking using aconvection oven can cut energy use by 20 percent. Because heated air is continuously circulated around the food in the convection oven, the cooking time and temperature are reduced.Toaster ovens can work as well as a conventional oven and are pretty versatile. They also need less time to heat up and use less energy to stay hot. Try to make use of these options more often in your green kitchen to not only save on energy, but also on that ever-precious time!