Baking pies, roasting a turkey, and heating side dishes for your family’s holiday feasts can be hard on your electric bill if you rely on your oven to do all the work.
This year, consider using your stovetop, barbecue grill, microwave oven, slow cooker, toaster oven, pressure cooker, or electric skillet to prepare your bird and trimmings.
Here are more energy-efficiency tips:
- Go outside: Treat your family by smoking, grilling, or frying your turkey outdoors. It is a quicker way to cook a bird. The flavor is a nice change from a traditional, oven-roasted turkey.
- Use the microwave: Heat already-made vegetables, potatoes, and other side dishes in the microwave.
- Bake everything at the same time: Pies, bread, ham, and potatoes can bake simultaneously. The more your oven can do at once, the less time you need to use it. Leave enough space between items for air and heat to circulate.
- Mix up your sides: Serve food that doesn’t need to be cooked. The turkey, dressing, and potatoes will be hot. Add variety by preparing cold salads and raw vegetables with dip. Experiment with simple desserts, such as frozen peanut butter pie or no-bake cheesecake.
- Keep it closed: When you use the oven, resist opening the door. Every time you peek inside, you let out heat, and the oven has to work harder to get back to the proper temperature.
- Consider your dish: Choose glass or ceramic pans for the oven. They cook food at temperatures as much as 25 degrees lower than metal pans.
- Size it right: The burners on your cooktop will work more efficiently if you match the size of the burner to the size of the pot. Placing a small pot on a large burner wastes heat from the part of the burner that does not touch the pot.
- Clean as you go: Clean the burners and the oven. If you use the self-cleaning function on your oven while it is still hot after you use it to prepare a meal, it will use the residual heat and work more quickly.