It's touted as being a way to save money while cook with minimal effort.
Passive cooking involves cooking your food in boiling water for two minutes and then turning the hob off and leaving the food resting in a pan with the lid on for a further 10 or so minutes.
This - apparently - will allow you to make fully-cooked food while using less energy, and can work for ingredients such as pasta and vegetables which are safe to eat if they do end up slightly undercooked.
According to Utility Bidder, the passive cooking method can even save you 11p each time you use your hob, and for a gas hob you could save around 3p. Around 20 percent of the average household's energy bill is racked up in the kitchen, aacording to Energy Saving Trust.
It's not a whole lot but it does add up and could save you around 40 quid a year if you have an electric hob. So I decided to put the passive cooking technique to test in my kitchen on pasta to see if it was worthwhile.
Here's how I got on...
With temperatures outside dropping I turned to one of my favourite comfort meals; macaroni cheese - just like the ones that they'd serve at school on a Friday.
Healthy? Absolutely not. Tasty? Somewhat. Perks me up on a dull day? Faster than coffee.
The cooking process
As advised, I boiled the kettle so that the water was ready for the pasta from the get go.
Boiling a half-filled kettle costs around 4p by the way, bringing the passive cooking savings down to 7p for every time you use the technique - or around £25.55 a year if you hob cook every day which is still a decent saving.
Then - as I always do - I put in way too much pasta despite thinking that I've measured it correctly this time.
I had the hob on full-blast for two minutes then turned it off while I tended to the cheese sauce.
After that it was just a waiting game, although I did notice that even after 10 minutes of the hob being switched off the water was still bubbling away.
After 12 minutes the sauce was ready (I didn't use the passive cooking method on the sauce) so I chucked the pasta in, mixed and plated it up, and gave it a taste.
The results
Honestly, the pasta was a tad al-dente but that wouldn't put me off of trying out this method again, and potentially making it a regular thing if (very much if) I manage to perfect it.
It wasn't as if it was chewy or crunchy, just a little more firm than usual. It certainly didn't stop me from clearing my plate in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
I'll definitely be giving this method a few more shots - but probably on some veggies as that mac n' cheese pretty much filled up my pasta quota for the month.
I'm a bit put off by the fact that you need to boil the kettle first as it almost halves the savings. Although, during a cost of living crisis, every penny counts.
Overall I would give the pasta a six out of 10 and the money saving method a five out of 10 - worth another try, but hardly life-changing.
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