Total Pageviews

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Cooking with the Clothes Dryer

Recently I've wondered if it's going possible to cook with the clothes dryer. Could you, for example, put a seasoned fish fillet in the dryer and run it for an hour, resulting in a juicy, hot treat? My mother is skeptical, but I'm tempted to give it a try. I can see cooking baked potatoes, steamed vegetables, and many other items in this manner. You could even dry your clothes at the same time.

4 comments:

Jeff Shyluk said...

Your clothes dryer gets to maybe 100-120 degrees fahrenheit. That's roughly the equivalent of the "keep warm" setting in your oven. So you could use it to re-heat leftovers or warm (expired) milk. In fact I double-dog dare you to try, although probably putting food in the dryer will void the warranty.

If you had a clothes steamer, that might work.

Jeff Shyluk said...

I've thought about this some more overnight. There's a French style of cooking that requires the food to be hermetically sealed before cooking. What this does is drastically lower the required heat since the pressure in the bag lowers the boiling point. What this allows is for gentle heat to thoroughly cook meat.

So, I suggest a Coca-Cola roast.

1 small portion boneless pork - shoulder for a roast, butt for pulled pork.
1 can Coca-Cola

If you have a BBQ injector, inject the contents of one can of Coke into the pork. If not, pour the Coke into a heavy-duty vaccuum seal bag. Then put the pork in the bag and seal it. You'll need one of those bags with a solid thermal seal, not a ziplock.

In theory, you could also just do this with a piece of pork sealed at the grocery, since sometimes you can get it sealed heavily, although you couldn't season it which seems pointless to me. Maybe the grocer would seal a Coked-up pork for you.

Put the bag in the dryer and run the dryer for perhaps 8-12 hours. I'm guessing six hours per pound of meat. Hopefully your house does not catch fire. You'd want to be certain the dryer is free of lint in both the collector and the inside filter. Ideally, you'd use a laundromat dryer or an apartment dryer since those units are more used to being run all day.

This could be something really good. The tumbling action of the dryer would be certain to tenderize the meat. Coke has the same effect on pork. JSVB Post #197 shows you how to make Pork-A-Cola: the Coke tenderizes and lightly seasons the pork. So, when your roast is done, it should be so tender you could eat it with a spoon.

I was thinking that you could sacrifice a cheap meat thermometer by leaving it in the pork before you bag it, since puncturing the bag at any time during cooking would be bad. If the thermometer broke, though, that would also be trouble. I guess what you would do is cook the thing for at least eight hours and be ready to finish it in the oven if it remains undercooked. However, it's my guess that you'd have a complete pork roast at the end of the dryer cycle.

Serve with autumn vegetables and dry white wine. Or more Coke.

Earl J. Woods said...

I knew you would come through with a feasible solution, Jeff!

Susan_rn92 said...

Ahh, but the true appliance of choice ( besides the oven) is the dishwasher. Check out Mythbusters dishwasher lasagna for a delicious meal method that cooks and cleans.