Don’t have a Sous Vide cooker? No problem. This new concept by Israeli design student Iftach Gazit that combines cooking and laundry together might just be your dream come true. Your food will be spinning with the washing machine, doing laundry and cooking at the same time, conserving plenty of energy as well.
Gazit got his inspiration from the Sous Vide cooking technique where vacuum sealed pouches are cooked in controlled conditions in a water bath or a steamer. He created steam-bag meals that you can just drop in your laundry, whether it is prepackaged foods, or steak with herb, or fresh salmon. The Tyvek bags are waterproof and come with clothing labels.
So your washing machine will be saving you not only the energy consumed but also plenty of time. “But rather than cooking a piece of meat at 58C for two and a half hours, you could just set your washing machine to ‘synthetics’ for a long cycle. For vegetables, you could set it to a short hot ‘cotton’ program,” Gazit said in an interview. He had spent a long time studying daily habits of homeless people in the Mew York City and noticed the importance of laundry service to the community and decided to use the laundromat as a free way of cooking.
“The food we eat, and the way we eat it, reflects on our taste but much more on our economic abilities and culture. Our meals provide an example of the social aspects of our lives. In this case we will witness the rise (and fall) of the middle class as it can be seen through the home cooked meal. “
Gazit’s idea of cooking food in the washing machine is not all that novel. An Italian writer Lisa Casali created a cookbook in 2012, called Cucinare in Lavastoviglie (“Cooking in the Dishwasher”). The cookbook, however, is only in Italian but there are some how-to videos on YouTube with English subtitles. Talking about the method, Casali said, “After some experiments, I found that it wasn’t just a different way to cook; it was a really particular technique. Something I was looking for years: the way to cook at low temperature at home.”
Instead of using vacuum sealed bags, Casali user sealed jars as the washing machine provides a little more padding with clothes. So the idea was just an old hack, but today this is a practical reality.
Images: GRAY Design