“Residual Heat” Can Help You Be More Environmentally Friendly
By: Jayla Sun
Tags: Life Hacking, Society, Science, Sustainability, Environment

“Residual Heat” Can Help You Be More Environmentally Friendly

And a non-exhaustive list of ways to use it

Photo by Tina Dawson on Unsplash

I’m a really bad environmentalist, if I can even call myself that. I don’t know anything our ecosystem or the science behind the many ways we’re damaging it. I don’t know anything about climate change or global warming, other than the fact that it’s and that it’s happening at a breakneck rate.

What makes me a truly bad environmentalist is that I haven’t taken much action to remedy any of this.

But there is one trick? rule? method? that we’ve always used at home, and honestly— I think it’s brilliant.

Can it help us save the Earth? I don’t know. My guess is probably not. But I’m a believer in that every bit counts. Even if only a little bit is all we can manage.

I can’t remember why or how this all started. But my mom and I have coined the term “residual heat” and we practice it all the time.

The term speaks for itself. Residual heat is the “leftover” heat from something. I use quotes around leftover because well — it shouldn’t be “leftover”, it should be used in some way. And that’s exactly what we do. We find useful ways to put the “residual heat” to use.

Maybe some examples will help explain:

Drying dishes:

We are primitive and simple. So we never hopped on board the whole dishwasher trend… if that was even ever a trend.

I once tried a dishwasher at a Hilton Homewood Suites, just for the experience. It was awful. I’m not sure how people put up with the noise. I mean, maybe dishwasher technology has improved over the years.

But anyhow, we wash our dishes by hand and let them air dry before putting them away.

If you can remember back to a manual dish washing time, you’ll know this is a tricky endeavour. Air-drying dishes takes a VERY long time and that means there’s a big fat chance someone’s going to use the kitchen before your dishes are dry and accidentally get them wet before you have a chance to stow them away.

Sounds kind of crazy that I’m delving this far into dishwashing science. But we discovered one day while baking that setting dishes on the stove top does a really good job at drying dishes. Within twenty minutes or so, you have squeaky dry, warm dishes — all warmed by the residual heat of your oven.

Ever since, if I’m baking something in the toaster oven or the big oven, I’ll do the dishes first and set them out to dry while my food cooks.

Softening laundry:

Again, we’re primitive. We are also fortunate, in that we have a giant washer, an unused basement, and enough clothing to last three lifetimes. So usually, we do a large load at the beginning of the week and then hang everything in the basement to dry. No one really misses the space occupied by the multiple hangers or the clothes hanging on the racks.

But if you’ve ever hung laundry, you know that you don’t get that soft feel that comes from the dryer.

So we still toss our dry laundry into the dryer… just for a few minutes, though, enough to warm and soften up the clothes.

Because we do such a large batch, we end up having to dry everything in two batches. So, we’ve broken it down to a science. Things like shirts, sweaters, and pants where softness is more important go into the dryer for the first batch. Then things like towels and socks sit in the dryer (turned off) to absorb whatever residual heat remains. Sure, the second batch isn’t as hot and it isn’t as soft. But honestly, towels get wet before you can appreciate the “softness” and socks… I mean, c’mon.

Boiling food:

I love potatoes. They are hands down one of my favourite foods. Mashed, baked, fried, scalloped, hashed, I could go on and on and on. But that’s not the point of this.

The point is, potatoes are awesome, but they take a long time to cook. Baking averages 30–45mins, frying takes 30–35 mins… even air-frying takes upwards of 20 mins etc. No matter how you slice or dice it, cooking potatoes takes a long time. There’s no shortening it… but there’s nothing worse than an undercooked potato.

I’ve discovered though, that par-boiling a potato does wonders. So, I’ve narrowed down my process to a science. First I boil water in a kettle. Then I pour the water from the kettle into a pot and put my potatoes in. I turn on the stove to let the water come to a raging, rolling bubble (which doesn’t take much since the water was already boiling hot). And then, I turn off the stove and let the potatoes sit in the pot with the lid on. I leave them there to slowly steam? boil? cook? … until practically all the residual heat has dissipated.

Honestly, I this has got to be my favourite way of using “residual heat”. I can “boil” the potatoes early in the day and then cook them up quickly when it’s closer to dinner time. What’s even better about this trick is that you don’t need to watch the stove or worry about burning your house down!