The Fireless Cook Book

Does the idea appeal to you of putting your dinner on to cook and then going visiting, or to the theatre, or sitting down to read, write, or sew, with no further thought for your food until it is time to serve it? It sounds like a fairy tale to say that you can bring food to the boiling point, put it into a box of hay, and leave it for a few hours, returning to find it cooked, and often better cooked than in any other way! Yet it is true. Norwegian housewives have known this for many years; and some other European nations have used the hay-box to a considerable extent, although it is only recently that its wonders have become rather widely known and talked about in America. The original box filled with hay has gone through a process of evolution, and become the fireless cooker of varied form and adaptability. Just what can we expect the fireless cooker to do? What foods will it cook to advantage? Almost all such dishes as are usually prepared by boiling or steaming, as well as many that are baked-soups, boiled or braised meats, fish, sauces, fruits, vegetables, puddings, eggs, in fact, almost everything that does not need to be crisp can be cooked in a simple hay-box. If the composition of foods and the general principles of cookery are well understood, but little special instruction will be needed to enable one to prepare such dishes with success; though even a novice may use a fireless cooker if the general directions and explanations, as well as the individual recipes, are carefully read and followed. While such dishes as toast, pancakes, roast or broiled meats, baked bread and biscuits, are impossible to cook in the simpler form of hay-box, the insulated oven, the latest development of the fireless cooker, opens up possibilities that may lead to a much wider adaptation of home-made insulators to domestic purposes. Roast meats, however, may first be cooked in the oven and completed in the hay-box or cooker, or they may be cooked in the hay-box till nearly done and then roasted for a short time to obtain the crispness which can be given only by cooking with great heat.