More and more people are getting back to basics and removing ready meals from their diet and returning to good old fashioned home-cooked food. Home cooking, is not only healthier, it can be drastically cheaper too.

However, much knowledge has been lost in the void that ready meals and takeaways have produced - meaning there is a lack of skills in the average kitchen. And while there are enough resources demonstrating how to prepare cheap, fresh and healthy meals, there is very little emphasis on waste.

Wasting food is certainly something that all of us should strive to avoid, especially when some people in the world still do not have enough to eat, but other sorts of waste should equally be avoided such as the energy we consume in the kitchen.

Having four rings burning on the hob, the oven on full and a microwave whirring in the background is not only damaging to the environment but your cookery will also add to your energy bills.

However there are several tips to aid you to reduce your power consumption when cooking and save energy:

When using the hob, allow your vegetables to share a pot. By using as little water as possible and placing the vegetables in order of cooking speed - the slower cooking ones first - your vegetables will be cooked just as well but with far less energy.

By using less pots and pans you will also reduce washing up which will also help save energy.

Cookers take time to warm up and cool down. You can use the heat of the oven once its off to finish of cooking items and to keep things warm

There are some great eco friendly cookers available that cook with far less power. Slow cookers, pressure cookers and energy saving Halogen Ovens use far less power than conventional cooking methods.

In particular halogen cooking is a real benefit to the environment. Not only are halogen hob rings commonplace but now halogen ovens which heat up extremely quickly and use almost half as much power can be a real energy save.

artofcooking.net