Fireless Cookers Haybox Cookers & Retained Heat Cookers

Copyright©2018 George Eccleston

Produced in the United Kingdom

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission of the author or publisher.

Disclaimer

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, illness, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Contents

Chapter 1  Fireless, Haybox & Retained heat cookers

Chapter 2  How it works

Chapter 3  Constructing your fireless cooker

Chapter 4  Your pan of choice

Chapter 5  Cooking food

Chapter 6  More haste-Less waste

Chapter 7  Bulk cooking

Chapter 8  Health & safety

Chapter 9  Recipes

Chapter 10 Making stock

Chapter 11 Cooking very small meals

Chapter 12 Points to remember

Chapter 13 Happy cooking

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Chapter 1

Fireless, Haybox & Retained heat cookers

The fireless cooker has been known by many names throughout history. It’s been known as a Hay box cooker, wonder oven, straw box cooker, a Retained heat cooker and quite a few other names as well. They are all the same thing and do exactly the same job. It has been used in one form or another for at least 200 years.  In the beginning it involved nothing more than burying a hot pot of food inside a huge pile of hay. This kept the food hot whilst workers toiled in the fields happy in the knowledge that a properly cooked hot meal was waiting for them.

As time progressed people used some design knowledge and thought of ways to improve it, making it more practical to use. The early boxes were built and stuffed full of hay so that food could now be cooked inside the house or even brought with them on their travels.

During the Second World War the British government in a desperate attempt to reduce people’s fuel consumption printed leaflets showing them how to build these boxes for themselves. This along with recipes and instructions helped many a family get by on their meagre food & fuel rations.

Once the war was over fuel became plentiful & cheap again. This meant that the fireless cooker was forgotten about once more. Costs over time will always start to rise again, and wages will never seem to stretch to what people actually need in life. It’s at times like these that people start to look towards money saving life hacks like the fireless cooker. The resurgence of this great device is long overdue. And now that people are finally becoming aware of the damage that we are doing to our planet by overusing its resources, there has never been a better time to start using this wondrous device.

The fireless cooker is a thermal cooking device, similar to a thermos flask. It works by preventing heat from escaping from the pan that contains the food. Because heat cannot escape into the atmosphere away from the pan it has no choice but to work its way into the food itself, cooking it slowly but surely. It is basically the same as a slow cooker or Crockpot, except that it doesn’t run on electricity or any other power source. The only energy this device needs to cook food with is a little bit of heat which comes very briefly from your kitchen stove.

Using a Fireless cooker can significantly reduce your fuel bills, reduce your carbon footprint and allow you more independence from the large utility companies that are bleeding your finances dry.

You are about to learn how to build your own thermal cooking device, how to cook many types of food in it and how to reduce your cooking cost. You will also be reducing your carbon foot print by a significant amount.

Using the fireless cooker will save you cash, save you gas/electric and help to save the planet. What more could you ask for?

Benefits of a fireless cooker

The food cooks without supervision-freeing up valuable time for you.

Large amounts of fuel are saved-Saving you money.

The food cannot boil dry or burn.

There are no fumes or emissions and no power source is required.

Your carbon footprint is greatly reduced.

It is easy to build and cheap to make.

Chapter 2

How it works

The hottest temperature a pan filled with water can reach (at sea level) is 100 degrees Celsius (the boiling point of water), no matter how much heat you throw at it or how long you cook it for. Once it reaches this temperature water starts to turn into steam and evaporates. This means that so long as there is water in the pan then the water can never go above that 100 degrees Celsius temperature.

Once it has reached this temperature you are simply replacing the heat from the escaping steam & the heat radiating from the pan itself. This gets transferred to the air in the room heating up the kitchen. This cools the pan down, which means that you then have to replace this heat or your food will stop cooking. The heat coming from the stove replaces the heat lost from the pan and continues the cooking of the food inside it. This cycle repeats itself until the food is cooked.

This means that once the liquid & the contents of the pan have reached a certain temperature, then it doesn’t actually need any more heat. Keeping the pan simmering is basically keeping the water at the boiling point (or very slightly below it), simmering is replacing the heat as it escapes. If you can find a way of stopping the heat from escaping from the pan in the first place, then you don’t have to replace it. The fireless cooker traps the heat inside the pan and keeps the food simmering away for hours on end, totally free of charge and without any extra fuel.

Containing the