When we lived in Denmark, we had a friend who was a chef and invited a group of people to eat at his apartment once a month. He prepared delicious meals. He would start his preparation early in the day, make a dish and keep it warm (and cooking) for hours by starting it on the stove and then transferring it to the pillows and dynes in his bed. We took that technique and wrote the book 'Pot in a Pillow' cooking.
You start with a sturdy pan with a good fitting lid. Add at least 1 cup of liquid (broth, water etc) and add the food you want to cook. Start cooking this on a heat source (an open fire, camp stove or a regular stove until the internal temperature is 165 degrees and the food is heated through), then transfer the pot to an insulated container which captures the heat, releasing it slowly and continues to cook the food for several hours.
We found this is a very old cooking technique. In the ‘olden days’ people called it a straw box cooker. A pot was put into a box and straw was tamped all around it which served as the insulation. The pot was heated in the fireplace and when the food was heated sufficiently through, it was transferred to this straw box and a pillow was put on top. The food was heated but not cooked through. By capturing the heat, the food keep cooking for several hours until it was ready to be served.
After some study, we found the same technique was used by the Tongans and Hawaiians when they dig a hole, make a fire in it which is burned down to coals. Meat is wrapped in large leaves, put on top of the coals, covered with earth and is left to cook for hours.
Our book 'Pot in a Pillow Cooking' is on this blog and can be downloaded for free. It contains the cooking principles and patterns to make ‘Pot in a Pillow’ cookers from barrels, plastic sheets, fabric, Styrofoam pellets or polyester batting. Recipes are also included. Many grocery stores now carry various insulated bags that work on the same principles.
It is great to understand this principle in case you are in an emergency situation. If you have a pot you can start cooking some food using a small amount of fuel in your rocket stove or over a campfire. The pot can then be transferred to a sleeping bag or wrapped with several towels etc to hold in the heat and cook the food.
I liked to have my Sunday free of work so when my family was young, I would start a roast on the stove Saturday night and put it into the ‘Pot in a Pillow Cooker’ to cook over night. If my insulation was good, it was tender and ready to eat by noon the next day. Sometimes I would put it on the stove the next morning, heat it again and transfer it to the 'Pot in a Pillow' to make sure the temperature kept at 165 degrees or above until our noon meal. If food sits for a lower temperature than that for very long, bacteria could grow and make it unhealthy to eat.
When I worked during the day, I could start dinner in the morning, put it into the' Pot in a Pillow Cooker' and when I came home tired from work, dinner was hot and ready to be served.
The insulation around a pot idea is true for keeping foods cold as well as hot. When we would take a 12 hour trip, we started in the evening loading the kids in the car and getting them all settled for sleep. I made frozen yogurt, put it into my portable 'Pot in a Pillow' and kept my husband, who was driving, awake all night by serving him small amounts as he drove. Every time I would open the cooker, the insulative value was slightly lost so by time we arrived at our destination, the frozen yogurt was the consistency of soft ice cream.
