Roasting, Frying & Steaming

Most of our electric energy usage is in the kitchen.  We have an electric halogen hob, twin electric ovens, with one doubling up as a microwave.  All of these things are very hungry for electricity.  Cooking our Christmas dinner used  12kwh of electricity [Main Oven – 4kwh; Top Oven – 3kwh; Hobs x3 – 5kwh] which cost £2.40.    Obviously not all meals are going to be that power hungry, but our Sunday Roast will usually use 8 to 9kwh (£1.60 to £1.80).

We have started to look at more efficient ways of cooking our food.  As well as increasing the amount of ‘One Pot’ meals we eat, one thing we have started to use regularly is an electric steamer.   We looked for one that used relatively little electricity and the one we settled on was the Russell Hobbs Food Collection 7 Litre Compact Food Steamer.  This model uses around 400w and takes about 30 minutes to steam vegetables to a mushy pulp (which is how my husband likes them!).  The total energy usage for each meal cooked in the steamer is around 200w = 4p.   Compared with using a stovetop steamer at around 1.5kwh = 30p.  This is manifestly only a small saving (26p), but as we cook at least 300 times a year this will add up!  The build quality of this steamer isn’t brilliant, the plastic steaming baskets are a little thin, but it performs its function well and stacks down to a nice small size for storage when not in use.

We bought a Ninja Foodi Max 9 in 1 multi cooker primarily to cook chips when our Tefal Actifry finally died.  Because it has so many functions and uses relatively little electricity it has now become our primary cooking tool.  It is particularly good at air frying, slow and pressure cooking.  For most functions the Ninja uses significantly less power than the oven or the hob.  The average energy usage per meal using the Ninja Foodi in December 2021 was < 500w (10p).  This compares to a meal where I would use 2 rings on the hob and the smaller top oven using 5kwh (£1) of electricity.  We do however rarely cook only in the Foodi, and frequently combine it with our steamer.  On these occasions we would use slightly less than 700w per meal (14p).

It is difficult to work out how much money using the Ninja Foodi and steamer has saved us as we don’t always use them and may occasionally combine them with one ring on the hob or the smaller top oven.  But using some estimations I have calculated the potential savings over a year, where we cook on 300 occasions.

Ninja Foodi & Steamer Energy Usage (estimate)

Oven + 2 Hob Rings Energy Usage (estimate)

So the potential savings are about £258 per year.  I don’t think we are saving this much as we still enjoy a nice roast every week, and sometimes we just forget to use the steamer as it is stored out of sight!  Using these figure both the steamer and the Foodi will pay for themselves within the year.