Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 255, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1919 — FOODS BEST ADAPTED TO FIRELESS COOKER [ARTICLE]

FOODS BEST ADAPTED TO FIRELESS COOKER

Intelligence Necessary to Obtain Best Results. Pies Cannot Be Baked Successfully in Ordinary Device—Cereals, Soups, Meats, Steamed Breads and Puddings Favored. (Prepared by the United States Department of Agriculture.) Obviously- -the—fireless—cooker- must be used with intelligence to obtain the best results. It is best suited to those foods which require boiling, steaming, or long, slow cooking in a moist heat. Foods cannot be fried in it, pigs can-. “not be baked successfully in the ordi-i nary fireless cooker, nor can any cookinrrhp dpne which Tenn Ires fl high dry heat for browning. Meats, however, may be partially roasted in the oven and finished in the cooker, or may be begun in the cooker and finished in the oven with much the same results as if they were roasted in the oven entirely. The classes of food best adapted to the cooker are cdreals, soups, meats, vegetables, r dried fruits, steamed breads and puddings. When different foods are cooked together in the fireless cooker they must be such as require the same amount of cooking, since the cooker cannot be opened to take out food without ■allowing••-•the escape a few pf heat and making it necessary To reheat the contents. It would not do to put foods which need about one and one-half hours to cook Into the cooker with a piece of meat which would stay several hours. The size of the container used in cooking with the fireless cooker should be governed according to the amount of food to be cooked. Small quantities of food cannot be cooked satisfactorily in a large kettle in the fireless cooker. If a large kettle must be used, better results will be obtained if some other material which holds heat fairly well is used to fill up the empty space. This may be accomplished in several ways. One is to put the small quantity of food to be cooked into a smaller, tightly closed kettle, fill the large kettle with boiling water and put the small kettle Into It, standing it on an inverted bowl or some other suitable support. This boiling water will take up and hold the heat better than air would. Several smaller dishes (if tightly covered-) may be placed In the kettle surrounded by boiling water. Baking powder or other tins often are found useful for this purpose. Another way is to place one food In a basin which just fits into the top of a large kettle and to let some other material, some vegetable perhaps, cook in the water in the bottom of the kettle. Two or

more flat, shallow kettles placed one on top of the other so as to fill the cooker enable one to cook small amounts of different foods successfully. Such kettles, made especially for use in tireless cookers, may be purchased. -