Pressure cooker vs. Thermal Cooker vs. Wonderbag

[Tom and Maje]

Originally Posted by CaliforniaGirl

I grew up using a pressure cooker, but have read many posts extolling the virtues of thermal cookers and Wonderbags. What are the relative benefits vs. drawbacks of each?

Thanks!

I can't comment on thermal cookers, but I do have a pressure cooker and a Wonderbag. I use my pressure cooker for dishes that include beans, and when I need to finish dishes in a hurry, such as when I was making passage meals. I use my Wonderbag for yogurt and as a regular slow cooker. The great thing about the Wonderbag is that it uses no energy.

Maje

[19 and counting]

My husband loves fooling around with the pressure cooker. I'd like more insight into the argument that it devalues the nutrients. I still love the in the bag in the oven on a sided pan in case of leaks. Everything turns out so tender and you don't need to watch for stuff falling off the stove top. I realize the plastic in the bag could be a problem but we don't do it all the time. Clean up is the easiest part if you are careful in opening the bag in the sink you simply have to then throw it away and don't even have to wash the pan it was in.
You can turn out quite a feast with a mix of meat, potatoes and vegetables. We do not have a microwave on this boat. After having the whole nine yards with microwaves, generators, ac etc. we have gone back to simple pictures are best. Not so much to break down and we are really independent this way as we can fix darn near anything that is on the boat now. Hot weather we cook on the propane bbq. We adjust to the local produce and what's on sale at the meat counter. We figure if you eat the local foods that grow where you are then you are probably going to feel good too. Just takes a bit of imagination and seasonings and helps to dine out sometimes to see how the locals serve whatever.

[dangag]

Just a little question for the one of you that use a presser cooker and the Wonderbag. In the instructions it is written that the wonderbag needs to be really closed tight to be effective. What about the handle of your PC, it's not to long? Are you all still happy with this system.
Thanks!!!

[Tom and Maje]

Originally Posted by dangag

Just a little question for the one of you that use a presser cooker and the Wonderbag. In the instructions it is written that the wonderbag needs to be really closed tight to be effective. What about the handle of your PC, it's not to long? Are you all still happy with this system.
Thanks!!!

I think you misunderstood. I don't put the pressure cooker in the Wonderbag. That is for slow or crockpot cooking only.

Maje

[NornaBiron]

Originally Posted by dangag

Just a little question for the one of you that use a presser cooker and the Wonderbag. In the instructions it is written that the wonderbag needs to be really closed tight to be effective. What about the handle of your PC, it's not to long? Are you all still happy with this system.
Thanks!!!

I have two pcs, one with a long handle and one with 'ears'. The Wonderbag will accommodate them both with no difficulty. It is flexible enough to draw the opening up around the pot and then stuff the lid in and finally close as tight as you can. I still use the Wonderbag and pressure cooker in the same way and will continue to do so.

I've had my Wonderbag for two years now, it has made a significant difference to the amount of propane we use. It allows me to free up at least one ring on the gas hob so making larger meals much easier to deal with. I wouldn't be without it, even if I moved ashore to a fully equipped kitchen I would be taking my Wonderbag (and pressure cookers) with me.

[NornaBiron]

Originally Posted by Tom and Maje

I think you misunderstood. I don't put the pressure cooker in the Wonderbag. That is for slow or crockpot cooking only.

Maje

You should try using them in conjunction, adds a whole new dimension!

[dangag]

Thank you so much for the fast reply!
I will order the wonderbag right now.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, dangag.

[Ribbit]

Originally Posted by 19 and counting

My husband loves fooling around with the pressure cooker. I'd like more insight into the argument that it devalues the nutrients.

People don't seem to appreciate just how much you have to cook some stuff (vegetables for example), to be able to get ANY nutrient value out of them at all!

Don't ask how I found out, but it really was the Hard Way[tm]. /sigh

But basically the bottom line is, we just don't have a digestive system that's designed to live on foodstuffs suited to a Mountain Gorilla.

I've done a lot of cooking for a lot of years while touring Europe on my motorbike(s).

My main cooking device has been a Kelly Kettle (free fuel, burns rubbish, will boil 2.5 pints of water in about 3 minutes with half a newspaper).

Kelly Kettle® - Camping Kettle & Stove | Camp Equipment | Camp Cookware | Survival kit | Kelly Kettle® - Original & Best

Backup (rubbish is soaking wet, along with everything else) has been a Vango folding stove (superb value for money and really well built) with an adaptor that takes the dirt cheap resealable butane bottles (under a pound each if you buy them in bulk), which do me for about a week of use each. Not too good in very cold weather, but if you warm the gas container they do work ok.

http://www.vango.co.uk/gb/outdoor-es...gas-stove.html to get any better, you have to pay about 5 times as much.

Apart from the cooking kit I use with the Kelly, which is usually to prepare food ready for slow cooking, what I use, is Food and Drink Flasks like these:

Buy ThermoCafe by Thermos 1.8 Litre Food and Drink Flask at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Flasks and travel mugs.

Four of them normally. On the autobahns of Europe, a cup of coffee is about 5 euros. So when I do breakfast and prepare the food for the day, I make either two flasks of coffee, or, if it is very hot, I pour ice cold bottled water into them. They stay piping hot, or ice cold, for about 18 hours (if less, you have a bad one, so check it and take it back if necessary, before you travel - failure rate can be quite high with some brands).

Two cups of coffee is 100 miles worth of petrol, in my bike . . . . Yes I would rather travel than pay that much for coffee (usually inferior anyway), thanks. It's also very nice to know that you have two good, piping hot meals available, whenever you feel like eating them.

Breakfast (porridge, boiled eggs, etc) I do in the flask. The Kelly just keeps boiling water until I fill the flasks with whatever I want for the day. One 1.8ltr flask gives me two stew type meals (Goulash, etc) a day. If doing Spag Bol, sauce goes in one, spaghetti goes in the other.

If curry, sauce goes in one, Rice goes in the other. I've found boil in the bag rice is most effective. It takes some pulling out of the flask, but that squeezes excess rice water out, then I just pour clean boiling water over the bag to rinse it (a rice day is a one flask for drinking day, and I will brew up when the flask is empty, in one of the many and frequent non-service rest areas, with the little Vango stove and a small kettle).

I've used pressure cookers a lot, and will get one dedicated for boat use. If it doesn't come with one, the boat stove will be propane (I've used them as my main source of cooking for over 35 years, with zero problems), it is very economical (generally about 10% of what it costs to cook with electricity - over here anyway), at home a 19kg bottle lasts me over a year.

Happy Cooking.

[Ribbit]

This was originally a very good documentary on food. But eventually, a lot of the dangerously accurate and informative content, was censored out (how dangerous a diet a Mountain Gorilla lives on, is for humans, for example - so bad for us in fact, the volunteers that underwent testing a Gorilla diet, had to be pulled off it within a couple of weeks, because the consequences had already become extremely dangerous to their health - there is only a tiny part of this left in the documentary that covers the experiment, and it had far greater prominence with its original airing).

Did Cooking Make Us Human? - Horizon - BBC Two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJjz5p1gUKM

vM[/url]The 'promoted' diet, of high carb and low fat (and non-animal fat), is basically doing us in.