CHAPTER IX

COOKING BY ABSENT TREATMENT

The fireless cooker is primarily a fuel saver. Secondarily, it has developed into an absent treatment cooker. That is, the food can be cooking while the lady of the house is airing the baby or at church or at club entertainments or while the cook is cleaning the kitchen, laundry and pantry. Thirdly, it cooks thoroughly and longly without the added expense of fuel or effort.

It was first made with a box and with excelsior and padding but the manufacturers came to the rescue as they always do to supply a demand and the comfortable fireless cooker was born.

Its story is short and sweet and to the point. The essential for the cooker is that it will cook by retained heat. Therefore, it must be built so that there will be no leakage of heat. For this reason it must have perfect insulation. The utensils must have covers that are clamped on so tight that they retain the heat generated by the stove or electric current. The lining should be non-absorbent of odors or “spill.” Therefore practice has proven that aluminum, which does not rust and is easily cleaned, is best for this lining. The linings too, must be smoother than smooth and be as seamless as it is possible for them to be made.

For long processes, of course, the heated plates must be able to retain heat and for this, soap stone and iron plates have been found to be the most practical.

The cookers can be had with from one to three or four compartments. Therefore, a whole dinner can be cooked. They claim that you can brown with them as well as in the roasting oven. Browning can be to some extent accomplished by an accomplished fireless expert with extra heating of extra plates and the like, but for real crisp browning it is as well to take out the food and rapidly brown in the oven.

The best results are gained with the fireless if used in conjunction with gas, oil and electric stoves. With the coal stove there is a loss of fuel saving of somewhere around 50% due to the fact that it takes so much time to get up the fire in a coal stove before the plates are heated sufficiently to do their work in the cooker.

Therefore, it is cheaper if you are going to use the fireless to any great extent to have a one burner gas plate on which to heat your plates for the fireless cooking process.

FIRELESS STOVES

In the chapters on gas and electric stoves, you will find there mentioned the fact that there are some stoves so built that they have fireless ovens. That simply means that they are so insulated and constructed that when the cooking has reached a certain point, the current of electricity or the gas can be turned off (in some cases turning itself off automatically) and the rest of the cooking can be done by the fireless process or on retained heat. This, of course, is the ideal way, because then there is no extra paraphernalia in the house and the stove is built so that the back is not bent in stooping to the low fireless cooker. For this reason, we would suggest that if you have a fireless, it is best to have it on a shelf built for it or keep it on a table. Save your back or your kitchen aid where you can, as we have but one back for every process in life!

The electric fireless cooker is one which has its own connection with the electric light circuit. It is not a stove or part of a stove--it is merely a most convenient cooker for which you are not forced to heat extra stoves or plates. It’s a two-in-one combination. According to directions you turn on and off the circuit.

COOKING

After you become accustomed to the fireless, you will find that cooking in it is quite definite and the time and the schedule can be heeded like clock-work. Do not let the food cool in the cooker, or you will have the cooker odor to battle with and you will always have olfactory souvenirs. The cooling and steaming in the box will do this only too well. Air your utensils and cooker after each usage or your food will have a uniform flavor which to say the least is most unpleasant.

Remember that it takes longer to cook like this and that you will only save time by being able to do something else without fear that your food is boiling over or burning or what not. This cookery takes a little practice, it is like everything else, a case where practise makes perfect and where the good utensil and a good understanding work together for good, while a poor utensil and a slovenly understanding work together for a little hell on earth, and this is putting it not one whit too strong.

It is no doubt true that tough cuts of meat are better cooked by the long process of retained heat; it is no doubt true that cereals are much more wholesome with the process of retained heat, yet it is doubtful whether the fireless cooker is ever bought for these reasons.

It is bought, however, to economize time, service and food. There is less waste of food by the fireless process. You can buy cheap cuts of food if you have a fireless cooker and enjoy them.

So, the fireless cooker is not an embroidery it is the “bib and tucker” of culinary labor.

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