Originally Posted by
nerys
chef. its not about the time. its about the electricity. when I have my own place I will be living without a utility grid connection. I will be living on solar and my own stored power. powering a range for 50 minutes will be a huge drain on that available power
Ahh, I hadn't realized that you had that constraint as well. When you are off-grid, sometimes you need to think outside of the box.
Normally once the thing is simmering, you reduce the heat almost to the lowest setting, and leave a cover on it until it is done. The electricity consumption ought not be all *that* much for most of the time. You didn't say what kind of hot water you would have available, but starting with hot instead of cold might save a bit of juice.
Keeping an eye out for a rice cooker as well likely far more efficient than the stove top
I see them in the Asian markets all the time - the fancy ones can do all sorts of stuff but can be pricy. The inexpensive ones are more than sufficient. You can look on Amazon to see the range of options. The claim is that a rice cooker would use about .4KWh for a full cycle, but it may well be that using the stovetop on the lowest setting would use even less:
http://www.willsmith.org/climatechange/domestic.html
http://users.tpg.com.au/users/robkem...tionTables.htm
If even this is even too much power, then perhaps a solar rice cooker. I have heard of people cooking rice in a wide-mouth thermos bottle as well.
http://theboatgalley.com/thermos-cooking/