Thermal Cooker Recipes (2024)

This recipe is a family favorite. I invented it a couple of years ago, and we have loved it in the pressure cooker and the slow cooker. It is a perfect recipe to transition over to the thermal cooker. You can click here to purchase your thermal cooker. And of course, thermal cooker curry is the perfect meal to take along on a potluck or soccer night. It’s warm and delicious, and can stay piping hot with its perfectly cooked rice, all in one pot. It definitely takes one-pot-cooking to a whole new level.

And as far as instructions? Well this one is really complicated—for a thermal cooker recipe. It involves exactly five simple steps.

1. Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces, dump all ingredients into the large nesting pot, except the tomato paste.
2. Bring the whole pot to a rolling boil for 3 minutes (or however long your pot’s manufacturer’s instructions instruct) stirring frequently.
3. Add in tomato paste, and bring back to boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
4. Cook your rice in smaller nesting pot at same time.
5. Put both pots into your thermal cooker, put the lid on, and seal. Leave for 3-8 hours, and then open for perfect dinner!

Thermalcookerrecipes.com provides recipes as a resource and educational tool only, and makes no food safety guarantees. We are not liable for any failure to meet food safety standards that may arise in your thermal cooking. We make every effort to ensure that our recipes meet established food safety standards. But all thermal cookers are not created equal, and there are many variables at play resulting in the temperatures reached and maintained in your thermal cooker. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific brand and model of thermal cooker, even if that means tailoring our recipes.

If you are in doubt, please consult the FDA page on foodborne illness for safe cooking temperatures and other safety tips. And usea food thermometerto ensure that your food has been cooked and stored at a safe temperature.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm255180.htm

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, we may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link we post. Don’t worry, itcosts you nothing.Thank you for supporting our website!

Swiss steak is a family favorite I’ve been enjoying since I was a little girl. It’s a comforting, filling meal, very easy to make and super delicious. It makes me think of Sunday dinners with my mom. It makes my mouth happy.

I’ve made it several times in the slow cooker for my family but my husband commented that this version in the thermal cooker was his favorite yet.

We decided the difference was that the vegetables don’t get nearly as mushy in the thermal cooker. They aren’t crisp by any means but they also aren’t pulverized.

I chose to make mashed potatoes this time for maximum comfort food. I got them PIPING hot and put them in the smaller nesting pot where they stayed nice and warm for the 6 ½ hours I had the meat cooking in the Saratoga Jacks.

However, this recipe is also really nice with rice or noodles.

I got home from an all-afternoon doctor’s appointment with my daughter, set the table, and when my husband walked in from work five minutes later, we ate. No stress.

Swiss Steak Quick Instructions

To make this meal, you dredge serving-sized pieces of steak in flour with a little salt and pepper. Then you brown them in oil in your thermal cooker pot, pour off excess fat and cover them with canned tomatoes and chopped vegetables. Boil the whole thing for at least three minutes, lid and seal it, and let it cook.

Thermalcookerrecipes.com provides recipes as a resource and educational tool only, and makes no food safety guarantees. We are not liable for any failure to meet food safety standards that may arise in your thermal cooking. We make every effort to ensure that our recipes meet established food safety standards. But all thermal cookers are not created equal, and there are many variables at play resulting in the temperatures reached and maintained in your thermal cooker. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific brand and model of thermal cooker, even if that means tailoring our recipes.

If you are in doubt, please consult the FDA page on foodborne illness for safe cooking temperatures and other safety tips. And use a food thermometer to ensure that your food has been cooked and stored at a safe temperature.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm255180.htm

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, we may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link we post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing. Thank you for supporting our website!

My sister-in-law is from Korea. She cooks the best food ever. This thermal cooker bulgogi is not one of her recipes. 🙁

But it is DELICIOUS, and until she comes over from Korea again to cook me her homemade bulgogi, this will have to do. Also, in the thermal cooker, it was about a 10 minute total project, and it came out piping hot. The meat was all intact, but melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the rice was perfect. All this after seven hours cooking, and being transported to a Korean themed bachelorette party —don’t ask!

The joy of this, like most of our recipes is that to cook it, you dump the ingredients into your large pot, boil hard for three minutes, and put it into the cooker to cook. This was a fun experiment, because I just let the rice go the whole time, hoping it wouldn’t overcook. It was absolutely delicious! Better for certain than 7 hours in the rice cooker on warm.

I felt like a cooking superstar, and it was easy as anything!

Thermal cooker bulgogi also freezes very well. And you will probably want to freeze it, because this recipe makes a lot. Air is your enemy, as it brings down your food temperatures too quickly, so I always cook in larger amounts, and freeze leftovers.

See Kathryn’s recipe for instructions on the rice that I cooked in the nesting upper pot.

**This post contains affiliate links**

Thermalcookerrecipes.com provides recipes as a resource and educational tool only, and makes no food safety guarantees. We are not liable for any failure to meet food safety standards that may arise in your thermal cooking. We make every effort to ensure that our recipes meet established food safety standards. But all thermal cookers are not created equal, and there are many variables at play resulting in the temperatures reached and maintained in your thermal cooker. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific brand and model of thermal cooker, even if that means tailoring our recipes.

If you are in doubt, please consult the FDA page on foodborne illness for safe cooking temperatures and other safety tips. And use a food thermometer to ensure that your food has been cooked and stored at a safe temperature.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm255180.htm

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, we may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link we post. Don’t worry, itcosts you nothing.Thank you for supporting our website!

Do you know about the new BEST way to cook white rice?

It’s rice. It’s white. This is the simplest of foods and I’ve been cooking it for years. I didn’t think you could surprise me with a new method or recipe when it came to white rice.

In a pot. On the stove.

In a rice cooker. My favorite. My OLD favorite.

When I got my thermal cooker, rice was one of the first things I tried.

It’s simple.

It’s fast.

And it comes out perfectly in the thermal cooker every time.

We’ve experimented with cooking time and have had great, perfectly-cooked rice with a total cooking time of anywhere from 2-5 hours so far. The five-hour rice was a bit mushier than thetwo-hour but still delicious, no more mushy than if it had sat in a rice cooker for 5 hours.

So if you’re up for perfect, delicious, portable rice, try it in a thermal cooker. The good news is, if you have a cooker with nesting pots, you can cook the rice in the top pot and sauce and meat in the bottom.

Stay tuned. We’ve got some great recipes for chicken or meat and sauce to cook up in the bottom pot.

For today, white rice.

Bring 4 cups of water and a few shakes of salt to boil in your inner pot.

Add 2 ½ cups of white rice (I used Jasmine rice) and boil for three minutes.

Insert pot into thermal cooker. Cover with inner lid. Close outer lid. Take the rice with you wherever you want to eat.

2-5 hours later open the thermal cooker and eat your perfect, amazing, white rice.

The thermal cooker works great for brown rice as well and Heather will be posting about that in the near future.

Enjoy!

This post contains affiliate links.

Thermalcookerrecipes.com provides recipes as a resource and educational tool only, and makes no food safety guarantees. We are not liable for any failure to meet food safety standards that may arise in your thermal cooking. We make every effort to ensure that our recipes meet established food safety standards. But all thermal cookers are not created equal, and there are many variables at play resulting in the temperatures reached and maintained in your thermal cooker. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific brand and model of thermal cooker, even if that means tailoring our recipes.

If you are in doubt, please consult the FDA page on foodborne illness for safe cooking temperatures and other safety tips. And use a food thermometer to ensure that your food has been cooked and stored at a safe temperature.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm255180.htm

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, we may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link we post. Don’t worry, itcosts you nothing.Thank you for supporting our website!

Thermal Cookers are AMAZING. This is the post where I tell you the things that have my friends rushing out to buya thermal cookerafter water aerobics or a park play date.

You see, I can’t shut up about my thermal cooker, because it’s my favorite thing to happen to cooking since the electric pressure cooker. (And yes, I’m still using that also. They work really well in tandem, and the electric pressure cooker has lightning speed on its side. But now in no particular order, I give you the top ten reasons why owning a thermal cooker will change your life!

1. Convenient Hot Meals On The Go

I can’t overemphasize this–This pot is like your slow cooker except it doesn’t overcook, it doesn’t need a power connection, it doesn’t slop over the sides because the unit is sealed. This beautiful piece of engineering makes dinner something you can take anywhere, hot, ready, at a moment’s notice. Oops, Mom, I forgot to tell you I’ve got a game across town? Someone grab the picnic bag and the thermal cooker full of dinner. It’s cool to the touch on the outside, and it’s not going to spill all over our car. In a few minutes, wherever we go, we’ve got our healthy, hot dinner ready. And look… I’ve just become a domestic goddess!

2. Reduced Fuel Consumption = Saving the Planet and Your Budget

If it only takes a 3-5 minute rolling boil (recommended by my thermal cooker manufacturer–consult yours for requirements as each unit is different) to provide enough heat to cook your meal all day and keep it hot for up to 8 hours, think of all the energy you’ll save. Maybe you’re happy about this because you care about global warming and reducing your carbon footprint. Maybe you want to save on your power and gas bills. Maybe you’re just glad not to heat your kitchen up and melt off all your makeup. 😉 Maybe it’s the apocalypse, and you don’t have much in the way of fuel. This way you’re cooking your food well with a minimal time and fuel output.

3. Camping and Road Trips

If you’re like me, most times you go camping the food is the biggest part of the ordeal. What if you only needed enough fuel for your camp stove to do a 3 minute boil of your dinner? What if you could just dump canned goods into the thermal cooker, bring it to a boil, close the lid, and head off on your adventures for the day. When you stagger back into camp after your husband pushed you up a mountain all day–not speaking from personal experience here–what if a hot beef stew was waiting in your thermal cooker with fresh-baked cornbread in the top nesting pot?

Happier already? Me too! Also think about the morning you leave for your camping trip, taking 3 minutes to boil the pot you prepared the night before. Then you nestle your thermal cooker in the back of the van between sleeping bags and pads, and when you finish setting up camp, your chicken curry and rice are perfectly ready for dinner. Camping and traveling have never been SO delicious!

Traveling with another family? No problem. This cooker fed two families of five with leftovers every night. Providing food for extended family? Also no problem. That’s why you have two thermal cookers. 😉

4. Soccer Night

Don’t look now, but with 5-10 minutes of morning prep, you’re ready to win soccer night EVERY week! The other moms are whipping out their rubbery takeout pizzas, and you’re like… hold on kids, here’s the sloppy joes I just threw together this morning. Careful, now… don’t burn your mouth. It’s piping hot! Ever wanted everyone to hate you? Oh, and then when it’s your turn to provide the game-end treats, you’re like, hold on… let me open up my second thermal cooker that’s stuffed full of ice cream sandwiches that I threw in three hours ago, and still have the frost on the outside of the papers! Don’t believe me? Get ready to have your mind blown.

5. Perfectly Cooked Meals —Ready When You Are

Ever left your slow-cooker on too long? Oh no… Look at all that crusty residue burnt all over the sides of the pan. That’s going to be a bear to clean, and not very delicious. And those potatoes and zucchini chunks? Boiled to bits of goo. But not anymore. No crusty, baked on residue, because the heat source for your food is the food itself. Nothing is jostling or boiling the food. Potatoes stay pristine and shaped perfectly, even the zucchini in my veggie stew was the perfect consistency, and I let that baby cook for 6-7 hours. Most meals can be ready in 2-4 hours, but can stay hot and ready for up to 8. And there’s no fire risk like you have with a slow cooker.

6. Overnight Hot Breakfasts —Ready When You Wake

Wait until you try our amazing overnight steel cut oats! Perfect texture, and piping hot right when you wake up! Cooking breakfast in three minutes the night before? Yes, please.

7. A Portable Fridge – Cold Foods On The Go

With a pre-chilled inner pot and ice in the top nesting pot, you’re that person who can bring ice-cold popsicles to the beach, and eat them four hours later. Yes, you shall be the star of every outing. Also, think about your cold foods kept nice and cold all day on the road trip. No more lukewarm, floppy string cheese. 🙂

8. Ten Minute Meal Prep

Early in the morning, when you have a few free minutes, throw together dinner for that night. The kitchen hasn’t had a chance to heat up yet, and you’re not going to heat it up. You’re just going to mix a bit, boil for a minute or two, and close the thermal cooker. Then all day, your dinner is happily cooking without heating up the kitchen, without sucking power, and without filling your house with food smells. I know the smell of cooking dinner is sometimes pleasant. But not after the cooking is done, and the strange meaty garlic smell is lurking in the bedroom for several hours. Also not when what you’re cooking is dry beans. Imagine well-cooked beans without the bean stench filling the house.

9. Pot Luck Perfection

Just imagine being the one person at the pot luck who isn’t looking for a plug in, who doesn’t have to reheat the food they brought, who doesn’t need to quickly shove their cold salad into the refrigerator, taking up prime fridge real estate. You’re the one who’s like . . . oh . . . it’s time to eat? Sure, let’s just open up my thermal cooker, and pull out the perfect meal as though I timed it for this very minute.

10. No More 5 PM What’s For Dinner —Healthier DinnerReady To Go

The bonus of cooking your food in five minutes in the morning, and then forgetting about it all day, is that when you’re suddenly realizing it’s five o’clock, and you’re having that heart attack, wondering if you should run to Little Caesar’s, you will realize that your hot, perfect, healthy meal is sitting waiting for your family. And this cooking method preserves nutrients, and will often mean a home-cooked meal when you might have reached for the box of mac and cheese instead.

If I haven’t convinced you yet, I’m not sure I ever will . . . but Kate couldn’t convince me until I saw it for myself. I’ll be posting more YouTube videos in the coming days, so hopefully it’ll feel like you’re there, experiencing it with me.

If I have convinced you, click hereto buy your Saratoga Jacks Thermal Cooker today!

This post contains affiliate links.

Thermalcookerrecipes.com provides recipes as a resource and educational tool only, and makes no food safety guarantees. We are not liable for any failure to meet food safety standards that may arise in your thermal cooking. We make every effort to ensure that our recipes meet established food safety standards. But all thermal cookers are not created equal, and there are many variables at play resulting in the temperatures reached and maintained in your thermal cooker. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific brand and model of thermal cooker, even if that means tailoring our recipes.

If you are in doubt, please consult the FDA page on foodborne illness for safe cooking temperatures and other safety tips. And use a food thermometer to ensure that your food has been cooked and stored at a safe temperature.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm255180.htm

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, we may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link we post. Don’t worry, itcosts you nothing.Thank you for supporting our website!

In my church community there’s a who lot of focus on emergency preparedness and self-sufficiency. We try to stay out of debt. We store food, water, and fuel for emergencies. We pack 72-hour kits so we will be prepared to leave our homes if disaster strikes.

Living just outside Seattle I know there’s a good chance I will see a major earthquake in my lifetime. So, I’ve been getting organized and taking classes and I’m feeling more and more confident every day that if something crazy were to happen, my family would be okay.

I recently took a class from an amazingly knowledgeable woman in my area who created a non-profit organization to help people be more prepared. The class was about fuel and cooking options in an emergency. She shared all kinds of stoves, pots, and cooking alternatives.

When I got home from the class, I knew I couldn’t afford to purchase everything she had mentioned but I wanted to start somewhere. So, I looked through my notes and did some research online.

There were tons of great stoves, burners, pots and devices but the one that impressed me the most was the thermal cooker.

Susan had suggested the Saratoga Jacks cooker but there were several other brands on the market. I ended up going with the Saratoga Jacks because of its price and because my friend had used that specific brand and could speak to the product quality.

The reason I went with the thermal cooker over all the other emergency cooking products was that the more I read about it, the more I realized that it was so much more than an emergency product.

I became convinced that it was a cooking tool I could use every single day of my life in a hundred different ways. And it would make my life so much easier.

As I’ve been using it over the last several weeks, I’ve become convinced that everyone needs a thermal cooker in their life.

It’s convenient.

It saves on fuel consumption and lowers carbon footprint (is that still a thing, Al Gore?).

It’s super easy to use.

It’s ultra-portable, making hot meals on the go simple and doable.

When I took it on vacation this summer, I made food for several friends and family members, breakfast oatmeal at a cabin in middle of nowhere, chili and soup we could take to the park and play while it cooked, and even cold food for a road trip.

Several people I cooked for asked me where they could get one and where they could find instructions and recipes for it.

I couldn’t find a great place for this online. So, my sister and I created one.

On this site, we will to post recipes, instructions, and ideas for using a thermal cooker, ways to transform your dinner hour and make your families lives better.

We’re so glad to have you join us on this journey!

**This post contains affiliate links**

Thermalcookerrecipes.com provides recipes as a resource and educational tool only, and makes no food safety guarantees. We are not liable for any failure to meet food safety standards that may arise in your thermal cooking. We make every effort to ensure that our recipes meet established food safety standards. But all thermal cookers are not created equal, and there are many variables at play resulting in the temperatures reached and maintained in your thermal cooker. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific brand and model of thermal cooker, even if that means tailoring our recipes.

If you are in doubt, please consult the FDA page on foodborne illness for safe cooking temperatures and other safety tips. And use a food thermometer to ensure that your food has been cooked and stored at a safe temperature.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm255180.htm

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, we may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link we post. Don’t worry, itcosts you nothing.Thank you for supporting our website!

Before my sister Kate came to visit this summer, she kept going on and on about her new hot pot, thermal cooker thingy. And wasn’t I so excited? And what meals were we going to make with it to serve everyone on our camping trip?

Um… none. Because the pot sounded weird. And I don’t need one more new contraption in my life.

But then she arrived, and cooked her first meal with the wondrous thermal cooker.

And then I didn’t stop cooking for both families with the blasted pot every day until she left to go home. I ordered my own before I even let her drive away. You canwatch my Unboxing of my Saratoga Jacks Thermal Cooker on our YouTube channel. I’m almost spastic with excitement!

The thermal cooker is essentially a slow-cooker . . . that cooks your food without attached power!

It has two sizes of pots that basically nest in a giant thermos, permitting you to cook two different dishes at once, using nothing but the heat of your initial rolling boil from your stove top, and the vacuum insulation power of the giant thermos to retain all that heat, cooking vegetables, sauces, meats, grains, and much more to perfection!

And did I mention that after those first few minutes to boil the raw ingredients, you place the hot pot into the thermos (which remains cool to the touch on the outside), seal it up, and it maintains food at a hot temperature for up to 8 hours if you follow the manufacturer’s directions?

Did I mention that the veggies stay intact, not losing shape or burning, because only the trapped heat does the cooking, so there’s far less chance of overcooking food, and I’ve never seen meat cooked to such perfect, fall-apart deliciousness.

No cords, no power suck, no electricity requirements. No tether keeping it in one spot.

I won’t go off now about all the AMAZING uses for this amazing pot, but just imagine the possibilities with me . . .

Or go here to buy your Saratoga Jacks Thermal Cooker today!

Thermalcookerrecipes.com provides recipes as a resource and educational tool only, and makes no food safety guarantees. We are not liable for any failure to meet food safety standards that may arise in your thermal cooking. We make every effort to ensure that our recipes meet established food safety standards. But all thermal cookers are not created equal, and there are many variables at play resulting in the temperatures reached and maintained in your thermal cooker. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific brand and model of thermal cooker, even if that means tailoring our recipes.

If you are in doubt, please consult the FDA page on foodborne illness for safe cooking temperatures and other safety tips. And use a food thermometer to ensure that your food has been cooked and stored at a safe temperature.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm255180.htm

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, we may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link we post. Don’t worry, itcosts you nothing.Thank you for supporting our website!

Before we get started with recipes and fangirl excitement about my new favorite kitchen tool, we should probably talk about what it is. Notice I said “kitchen tool” because it’s more than a pot, but I’m not sure if it counts as an appliance if it doesn’t use electricity. For now, it’s a tool.

A thermal cooker is an energy-efficient device that uses thermal insulation to continuously heat and cook food without the need for a constant heat source.

Basically, you heat your food at a high temperature for a few minutes in a metal pan. Then you put the entire metal pan in a giant thermos, and the food continues to cook for several hours. It’s like a slow cooker but portable and with less total energy consumption.

I recently used it at a family reunion to cook overnight steel-cut oats for 25 people. We were out at a cabin in the middle of nowhere. When my husband’s grandma saw it, she told me that cowboys used to do something similar to cook stew underground while they were out working all day.

The men would heat rocks in the fire and place them in a hole in the ground. Then they would put their stew pot in the ground with the hot rocks and cover it. When they came back that evening, the food would be done.

Thermal cooking saves energy and provides a convenient way to take hot food on the go. All thermal cooking should be done according to manufacturer’s directions to avoid food spoilage and food poisoning. Food needs to be kept at a high enough temperature to avoid foodborne illness.

Go here to buy your Saratoga Jacks Thermal Cooker today!

This post contains affiliate links.

Thermalcookerrecipes.com provides recipes as a resource and educational tool only, and makes no food safety guarantees. We are not liable for any failure to meet food safety standards that may arise in your thermal cooking. We make every effort to ensure that our recipes meet established food safety standards. But all thermal cookers are not created equal, and there are many variables at play resulting in the temperatures reached and maintained in your thermal cooker. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific brand and model of thermal cooker, even if that means tailoring our recipes.

If you are in doubt, please consult the FDA page on foodborne illness for safe cooking temperatures and other safety tips. And use a food thermometer to ensure that your food has been cooked and stored at a safe temperature.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm255180.htm

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, we may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link we post. Don’t worry, itcosts you nothing.Thank you for supporting our website!