00:0070% of the time a pot of chili sits on your stove. The burner is just paying rent. The
00:04water already boiled. The pot already holds the heat. You're still burning gas or electricity
00:09for another hour because nobody told you the rest of dinner can finish in a dead cooler
00:13on the floor. Tonight I'm going to show you how to build a 1918 fireless cooker in about
00:1910 minutes from a thrift store cooler and a stack of towels, then cook rice, beans and
00:24chili with the knobs add off. The box costs nothing if you already own the cooler. It
00:28cuts the time your stove actually has to stay on by about 70%. I have been running
00:33one for months. I'm not going back to babysitting a simmer. There's a reason this is not a solar
00:37oven and not an instant pot review, and it has nothing to do with hay. I will get to
00:41the part that actually keeps the pot above a safe hold for hours and the one mistake that
00:45turns this into lukewarm soup. First, you need to see why your stove is doing the expensive
00:50half of a job a towel can finish. A small electric burner sits around 1200 watts. At a typical
00:5616 cents a kilowatt hour, that is about 20 cents. For every hour you leave it on low.
01:01Two hours of simmering a day is roughly 140 dollars a year, just for the privilege of
01:05watching bubbles. Gas is cheaper per hour, and still wasteful in the same way. You pay
01:10to get the pot, screaming hot. After that, you're mostly fighting the kitchen air, which
01:15is trying to steal the heat as fast as you make it. The hay box stops the theft. The mechanism
01:19is almost insulting. Heat does not vanish when you kill the flame. It leaks. It leaks through
01:24the lid, through the thin metal wall, through the handle, and mostly it leaks upward, because
01:29hot air rises and your kitchen is a chimney. A heavy pot is a battery. Water is a better
01:35battery than you think. If you wrap that battery so the leak slows to a crawl, the temperature
01:39inside stays high enough to keep cooking starch and softening beans for three or four hours with
01:44the stove cold. A provecho, the cookstove lab that actually measures this stuff, puts the fuel savings
01:50between 20 and 80 percent, depending on the pot and the food. The high end is big wet pots. That
01:55is
01:55chili. That is beans. That is rice. This is not new. In 1867 a Norwegian box lined with wool and
02:03felt
02:03showed up at the Paris exhibition. They boiled a chicken, dropped the tin into the box, walked it to
02:08the far side of the room, and two hours later it was done. Americans called the later versions
02:13fireless cookers. By 1910 companies were selling them with names like the Acne Automatic.
02:19In 1914 a home economist named Mary Fraser wrote that there should be one in every kitchen in the
02:24land because food in it never burns, and you do not have to stand there feeding a fire. The USDA
02:30printed pamphlets on homemade versions around the First World War. Britain pushed hay boxes again when
02:35fuel got tight. Then we invented knobs that clicked and forgot the box. You do not need hay. Hay was
02:41what a
02:421918 farm had lying around. What you need is trapped air. Towels trap air. A sleeping bag traps air.
02:49Crumpled newspaper traps air. An old cooler is already a box designed to fight temperature change.
02:54That is the whole shopping list if you have a lidded pot. Use the heaviest pot you own with a
02:59lid that
02:59actually fits. Cast iron and enameled Dutch ovens are greedy about heat. Thin aluminum dumps it. Stainless works
03:07if it is thick enough to feel stupid when you pick it up empty. Fill it at least two-thirds.
03:11A half-empty pot is a half-empty battery. Use a little less water than you usually would because
03:16almost none of it will boil off in the box. Bring the food to a real rolling boil on the
03:21stove.
03:21Not a shy simmer. A boil you can hear. Rice wants about five hard minutes after it boils. Dried beans
03:28that were soaked overnight want closer to 15 or 20. Chili or stew wants 10. The first blast is the
03:33only
03:34paid heat. It also answers the safety question people use to talk themselves out of this and
03:38I will tear that one apart properly in a minute. The second the boil is honest. Lid on. Off the
03:43burner. Into the nest. Speed matters. Every 10 seconds of standing around is heat you already paid
03:49for walking into the room. If you are still here, subscribe. It is free and it keeps this channel
03:54testing the odd household machines nobody bothers with. Members get the longer teardown videos back to
03:59the box because the packing is the part that decides whether dinner is hot at six or sad at six.
04:06Build the nest before you ever light the stove. Open the cooler. Lay a folded towel on the floor of
04:11it.
04:12Set the empty pot in and shove towels, a folded blanket or a sleeping bag around it,
04:17until the pot has a snug hole including under the bottom. Leave a thick pillow of towels for the top.
04:23Heat rises. A naked lid under a half-closed cooler lid is how people decide and hay boxes do not
04:29work.
04:30The pot comes off the stove. Set it in the hole. Yank the side. Towels up around it. Bury the
04:36lid
04:37under that top pillow. Shut the cooler. Latch it if it has a latch. Then walk away. Do not peek.
04:43Opening it is the same as opening an oven. You just vented the battery. Rice is done in about an
04:48hour and a
04:49half in a decent nest. Chili and stew want three to four hours and will still be serving hot.
04:54Soaked beans want three. Overnight oatmeal works in a small lunch cooler if the insulation is thick.
04:58A weak nest gives you cooked oats that went cold, which is a texture crime, not a mystery.
05:03If you need it hotter at the table, one minute back on the burner wakes it up.
05:07That is still a 70% cut. The money is not theoretical. 20 cents an hour on a small electric
05:13burner.
05:1390 minutes of simmering you no longer buy, five nights a week, is about $78 a year on one pot
05:19habit.
05:20Add beans on weekends and a stew you use to babysit for two hours. And you are in the $150
05:25range without touching the oven. Households that keep a pot murmuring every night, or who use the
05:30oven as a warmer, can see $200 to $300. A store thermal cooker with a cute vacuum insert is $80
05:38to $200
05:39and does the same physics. Your cooler already did the shopping. Three stories people tell themselves,
05:45so they can keep paying the burner. It will go unsafe. This one gets repeated like a spell.
05:51The United States Department of Agriculture's food shop draws a hard line at 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
05:57Below that, down to 40, is the zone where leftover food is not a science experiment you want to run.
06:03A hay box is not a magic exemption. It is a hold. You start at a rolling boil, which is
06:09212 at sea level.
06:10A packed cooler is supposed to keep that pot hot, not lukewarm. If you open it three hours later and
06:16steam still slaps you, you cooked. If you open it and it is tepid, you do not serve it, you
06:21do not give
06:22it another hour, you throw it or you get it back above a proper reheat, and then eat it immediately.
06:27Meat dishes get brought back to a serious simmer for a few minutes after the box if you want to
06:33be
06:33boring and correct, which I am. Poultry needs to have hit 165 on a thermometer before you ever trusted
06:39the nest. This is a pot of beans, not a personality. You need hay. You need dead air. Hay is
06:46dead air with
06:47extra insects. A 1918 pamphlet used hay because the barn was free. A 2026 closet has towels. Same job.
06:54Wool is excellent. A cheap foam camping pad cut into scraps is excellent. Do not use fiberglass
07:02insulation unless you enjoy eating attic. It only does oatmeal. Oatmeal is the cute internet version.
07:07The 1867 demo was a chicken. The USDA pamphlets were cereals, meats, puddings, beans. I have done rice,
07:17chili, soaked black beans, and a pot of potatoes that came out like they had been simmered by someone with
07:21patience. I do not have. What it will not do is sear a steak, bake a cake, or cook a
07:27giant dry roast.
07:28It is a wet heat machine. If the food needs moving water or a brown crust, use the stove like
07:33a normal
07:34person for that part. Then park the sauce. The fourth one is quieter. You need a special appliance. You do
07:39not.
07:40The $200 thermal cooker is a hay box with better manners and a price tag. Same boil, same berry, same
07:47weight.
07:47The extra that makes this worth building, even if you like. Your stove is the warmer. Pack the box in
07:53the morning with last night's stew brought back to a boil. Latch it, take it to work, or leave it
07:57on the
07:57counter. Six hours later it is still a meal, not a science fair left over. Potlucks. A kid's practice
08:03that runs long. The night you get home late and refuse to order the thing in the bag. One cooler,
08:08two jobs,
08:08a few things that wreck it so you do not blame the year 1918. A warped lid. A pot sitting
08:15on the plastic
08:15floor with no towel under it. A cooler so huge the towels slosh around and leave air chimneys.
08:21Peaking. A thin pot. Starting from a polite simmer instead of a boil. Putting a half cup of rice in
08:28a
08:28six-quart dutch oven and expecting the empty iron to stay hot. Match the pot to the food. Match the
08:33nest to
08:33the pot. If you want to know whether your nest is any good before you trust dinner to it, boil
08:38a pot of
08:39water. Bury it. Come back in two hours with a thermometer. You want it still well above 140.
08:44If it died, add more on top and around the sides and try again. The test costs a burner in
08:49an afternoon
08:50and it is the only exam this box has to pass. I keep the cooler in the pantry now. The
08:55towels live in it
08:56so I am not hunting them while a pot screams. Dinner starts, the knobs go off, the kitchen gets quiet,
09:01and the food finishes like it has somewhere better to be. That is the whole trick. A dead
09:06appliance you already own doing the long half of the cook for free. If this saves you an hour of
09:10staring at a lid tonight, send it to the person in your house, who still hovers over a simmer,
09:14and tap so I know which of these old machines to drag back next.
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