The Hot Box

Every kitchen should have a hot box.

Here is my bottling pot; it easily takes three one-pound preserving jars, but today it has about seven pounds of thick vegetable soup, not yet in preserving jars.

The mixture has boiled for about one hour and I want it to simmer, to finish cooking through and through,

I place the pot on a bed of about three inches thick of clothing scraps in an old cardboard carton.

I pile the rest of the clothing scraps around and over the pot.

At three o’clock I slide the hot-box under the workbench and leave it overnight. When I rise tomorrow morning the pot will still be warm.

Then I decant the vegetable soup into one-pound preserving jars and sterilize/seal it.

Advantages of a hot-box

(1) Free. Construct it from scraps of cloth and an old cardboard carton. No lid needed.

(2) Reduces energy costs. I turn off the stove before I lift my cooking pot from the stove. No more electricity is used. The heat within the pot continues to cook the contents.

(3) Versatile: I simmer soups and stews, boiled citrus fruit (for marmalade), oatmeal/porridge (to make a fortnight’s pre-cooked breakfast).

(4) The contents of my hot-box cannot burn or boil dry.

(5) When (not if) the power outage occurs, my meals keep on cooking. What could be worse than a stew that you think has simmered overnight, not knowing that a six-hour power outage not only reduced your cooking time, but left the central part of your stew uncooked?)

(6) Can be used as a slow-cooker, with an close-to-hot meal waiting for you when you arrive home after work.

(7) Takes up no space on your kitchen counter or table.

Disadvantages of a hot-box

If you can think of any, please let me know.

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Eleven o’clock. At two o’clock I will head out to a function that will run until four o’clock. For that reason I am NOT baking bread today, for I like to catch the rising dough au point.

So I start preparing artichoke vegetable soup. By eleven-thirty the garlic, onions, carrots, artichokes and so on will be in my large pot coming to the boil. I do not want the pan to boil over of otherwise run out of control. So just before I walk out of the door dressed in my finest clothes, I shall turn off the stove power, lift the pot into my hotbox, and enjoy myself (we hope!).

When I return, I shall put the pot back on the stove; it will have lost little heat, and will quickly return to its business of coming to the boil.

Tonight, of course, it will return to the hot box to continue cooking over night.

Tomorrow morning I can bottle it into preserving jars.

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