Easy Cooking Tips You Wish You Thought Of
 You don't have to relearn how to do everything from making a souffle to boiling water to make some easy energy-saving changes in the kitchen.
Repeat after me: Smaller is better. Smaller pans need less energy to heat up. Microwaves use less energy than full-size ovens. Smaller ovens use less energy than larger ones.
Match the pan size to the size of the element on your electric cook-top. Make sure the pan covers the burner without going more than an inch beyond it. If you use a burner that is larger than the pan, you are paying to heat not just the pan but the air over the uncovered part of the burner.
Clean those metal burner pans under the burners so they are bright and shiny. They'll reflect the heat better back up to the pan. (It stands to reason that chrome-finish burner pans reflect more heat than black metal burner pans, but I haven't found my theory confirmed anywhere. Can anyone tell me if I got this right?)
Cover your pots when you can. The water will boil faster. That's physics.
Use the least amount of water you can get away with. It will take less time and energy to bring it to a boil. Use the lowest possible heat setting to keep the water boiling, steaming, simmering, or whatever your recipe calls for.
If you have an electric cook-top, turn the burner off right before you finish cooking. Make use of the heat the burner continues to give off as it cools down.
The flame on your gas burner should be blue. A yellow flame means the gas is not burning efficiently. Call the gas company to check it.
Defrost frozen food in the refrigerator before cooking. None of that "just run it under warm water until its ready." That wastes hot water. And don't just toss the hamburger on the counter to thaw. You are asking for visit from the food poisoning fairy.
Preheat your oven the minimum amount of time. In fact, while breads and pastries need a preheated oven other foods may not.
Turn on the oven light and look through the window in the door instead of opening the door to check if the food is done. Every time you open that door it takes the food longer to finish and you waste heat that the oven worked hard to make. For the same reason, don't peak under the lids on the stove-top.
Don't put foil on the racks or block the flow of air in your oven any other way. To keep that air flowing, stagger pans on the upper and lower racks if you are using more than one pan at a time.
Don't overcook food. Set a timer. Use a meat thermometer.
If you are going to use the self-cleaning feature on your oven (and do you really need to?), start the feature right after you've cooked something so the oven starts out already hot. Remember not to use it more than once a month (less if possible). Be sure your ventilation fan is on when cleaning the oven.
Your microwave will work more efficiently if the inside surfaces are clean. So if yours looks like the microwave at work, with three inches of crud on the walls, it's time to get out the sponge.
If you have microwave-safe serving dishes, use those in the microwave so you only have one dish to wash instead of two.
It doesn't take as much energy to reheat food as it does to cook it the first time--particularly if you reheat in the microwave or toaster oven. So cook big portions that give you leftovers you can keep in the fridge or freezer.
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