‘Who boiled this bloody kettle?’: How to avoid copping heat over power bills

A lot of us grew up with parents yelling at us to “turn off the bloody lights”. A generation that was familiar with shortages and outages never took flick-of-a-switch lighting for granted, just as country people who have lived with drought still get twitchy every time you run the tap (hello, in-laws).

Today’s equivalent looks set to be “turn off the bloody peas” and “who boiled this bloody kettle?” As winter power bills come in, we’ll be reminded constantly to reduce our consumption of gas and electricity.

Even if you can afford to pay your energy bills without a worry in the world, is that the point? We shouldn’t be wasting any precious resource – time, money, fossil fuels, sunshine, red wine, you name it.

In terms of cooking, much of the advice is just common sense, like covering pots and pans with their lids to retain heat, or matching the width of a pot with the width of the burner. If your burner is larger than your pan, you may as well stand there tearing up dollar bills.

Bad habits also take their toll. Like putting the kettle on for a cuppa, walking away, forgetting about it, coming back, putting it on again, going to check something on the computer, coming back, and putting it on again. Guilty. Nor should you heat the oven just to warm the plates, defrost the bread rolls, or toast your hazelnuts. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Better to do all three at once. Better still, do it in the residual heat of a turned-off oven. Yay, free heat.

Framing what to cook for dinner in terms of how to reduce the energy required will lead you directly to that one-pot wonder, the tray-bake. You put everything you feel like eating into the roasting tray, slather it with olive oil and sea salt, and bake it ’til you make it. Sausages with red capsicums and onions. Chicken thighs with sweet potato and kale. Eggplant with spicy lamb meatballs and tomatoes. Halved and flattened poussin with loads of fennel and potatoes.

If you think something will take longer than the rest to cook, cut it into smaller pieces or put it in a bit earlier. The tray-bake doesn’t just save the world’s energy resources, it saves yours, too. Just don’t keep opening the oven door to nick the crispiest bits of potatoes. Guilty.

theemptyplate@goodweekend.com.au

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.