It is hard to be too small, but worse to be too big. — A. O. Vinje.
By Tordis Undersrud
for boiling, baking, roasting, canning, and drying fruit and vegetables.
In our day, when we can simply flip a switch for boiling, roasting, and heating alike, it is up to us housewives to make proper use of this handy aid, «the electric current.»
Precisely when other fuel is hard to come by, electricity should be used economically and rationally.
To achieve rapid boiling, one should, when cooking with electricity, use pots with a thick, machined flat bottom as nearly as possible the same diameter as the hotplate. In testing the time to bring 7½ liters of water to a boil in a saucepan with a thick, even bottom versus a saucepan with a thin, curved, or dented bottom, it turned out that the former required 1 hour and the latter 1 hour and 53 minutes. A 1000-watt plate was used. The pot with the uneven bottom thus used nearly double the electricity and time.
With electricity we can steam all our food — meat, fish, vegetables, and potatoes — because each hotplate has a control switch adjustable in 3 stages, which lets us obtain the temperature we need. The food is brought to a boil with the switch on 3 (strong current) but continues cooking with the switch on 1 (weak current). …