Cooking

Cooking is quite central to all activity in Kanthaus. It takes place mostly in the Kitchen.

Here are some best practices to get it done effectively, efficiently, and not annoying anyone.

Frying

- Use the extractor for fumes and steam.

- Additionally open window and close all doors when frying animal products.

- Use stainless steel pans for general stir frying. They are virtually indestructible.

- Use non stick pans for eggs, pancakes, and other sensitive and sticky meals. Non stick pans are sensitive to temperature and they get scratched when having to clean burnt food.

- DO NOT use metal utensils on non stick surfaces. No buts, JUST DON'T.

- DO NOT use power level 9 on the stove tops, unless you are actively watching it and stirring, or there is a sufficient water in the pan/pot. It burns stuff FAST.

- Do not use the stove top glass surface to do other stuff. It breaks.

- If an alarm sounds, the controls are wet, or self destruction protocol was activated.

Containers of durable foods

- Close lids of buckets FULLY and THOROUGHLY. Moths are really sneaky!

- Spices: refill when empty. Refill cabinet is in the intermediate storage room.

Ingredients

We encourage cooks to look for and use existing ingredients as follow:

1) Fresh stuff that will go bad fast, like green leaf veggies.

2) Other fresh unprocessed foods.

3) Freezer stuff, because it takes up space.

4) Dry or canned durable food.

This is no dogma, merely a preference in line with our practice of saving food and trying to not buy much. Fresh ingredients are usually healthier, and are less appealing as time goes by, increasing it's chances of being thrown away. We want anyone cooking to do it happily and without feeling judged. Home made food is a gift we deeply appreciate.

Tips

Cooks are invited to use our wide offer of non obvious labor saving devices:

- Nicer dicer, for quick cubes or sticks of veggies

- Food processor, for slicing or grating carrots, for example.

- Pressure cooker: for potatoes, beans, rice and all sorts of other stuff

- Crepe maker: no need for a non stick pan