Wrapping a pressure cooker in insulation

Hello,

Just looking at this from a campervan point of view and to save butane canisters, that are not available everywhere, and not needing to have a larger propane bottle, as you will use limited gas.
And you can cook carbs and meat in one go in pressure cookers.

There are those thermal cookers, which are basically just large thermos flasks, but compared to a pressure cooker, they are maybe not as good as you lose heat when you pour the contents from a pot to container.
Far better to leave contents in the pressure cooker to carry on heating.

Say you cooked something in a pressure cooker in a campervan and wanted to leave it and go walkabout.

Would wool blankets be the best option with regards to low fire risk?
Would just be concerned about the bottom of the pot burning anything?

Cheers

Lots of info here if you look up haybox cooking.

I would use a thin dedicated wrap to protect from soot, a wool blanket and then whatever else you have.

As previously mentioned, a Haybox would be right up your alley!

Here is a link that might interest you - https://permies.com/t/207484/hay-box

Just to be absolutely clear:

You plan to take a pressure cooker up to pressure without messing with insulation, then turn off the gas, then put heat resistant insulation around it while it finishes cooking.  Is this correct?

When I use my pressure cooker for cooking food (as opposed to a pressure canner - different, much larger beast) once I turn off the burner, it reliably takes 15 minutes for the pressure to return to "low enough to open it". Surrounding the cooker in insulation - which will get damp from the steam as a heads up - would slow heat loss through the top and sides, but it will *NOT* stop it. So if your recipe requires cooking at a certain pressure for a certain length of time to be "cooked", that will no longer be true. However, the whole concept of haybox cooking or even the old camping trick of wrapping the boiling rice pot in a towel to let it finish cooking, will continue to cook the contents of the pot - just much more slowly.

"15" minute rice took more like a 1/2 hour in the towel sort of concept (and the towel got damp - because steam still came out of the pot. A sealed pot is a bomb. Please don't risk that!) Our haybox cooking experts will know how much time to allow for many foods and quantities of food at least in general terms, but I've not tried to use one myself. I'd also consider the difference in pots. I have a feeling that many haybox cooking people are using cast iron (enameled or not) to cook in their haybox. My old pressure cooker was thick aluminium and my new one is thin stainless, so neither of those have the same heat holding mass as cast iron would.

Short answer: once you remove the heat, very quickly your "pressure cooker" is just a normal pot regardless of whether you insulate it or not. Thus, you need to consider how that is going to affect your recipes when deciding how long to give things. Pressure will kill certain nasties because they get to a higher temperature - that's an asset. Pressure can do nifty things at high elevations where just getting water to boil is more time consuming. There are a bunch of factors that would require experimentation. The basic concept is sound.

This is one of the reasons I went with an electric pressure cooker, they have a high amount of insulation so it takes less power to heat and keep it at heat than a regular stove top version.

I could see it working really well by bringing it to pressure and enough cooking to keep everything in there safe (like if there is meat) then taking it off the stove and putting it in something like a hay box cooker without opening it.  

To save money and waste:

Buy one that runs off the green bottles, the Coleman ones. Then you can buy a $10 adapter that will let you refill your propane canisters at home from your big bottle. No more paying for a chunk of useless metal when all you really want is the propane inside.

As far as covering a gas powered cooking appliance to save a bit of money... Hell no.

This route is something to consider for zero energy use.



I know this thread is about a different kind of cooking but this stacks function and gets us closer to zero propane needed.

We have a five-gallon stainless steel pot I use for canning, water heating, cooking down maple syrup (to finish), etc. My husband put a coat of fiberglass wrapped in tinfoil, fastened with wire, around this. But it needs replaced about annually and we keep saying: Why doesn't someone manufacture an insulated, large stainless steel pot? Even if it were just double-walled with only air in the gap, It would really increase the efficiency of the pot. The lid should be doubled too.

A Carbon Fiber Welding Blanket can take  direct flames up to 1800F.
The grill and smoker crowd use them as insulation right on the external skin of their coolers.
They are pretty cheap.

A wood burning tlud stove could be a very cheap source of long lasting steady heat for pressure cooking.
A pot skirt will help any source of heat to be used more efficiently.
Most pressure cookers I come across have plastic handles that could be vulnerable over a wood fire, so they might need to be replaced.