Electric cooking onboard.

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Minerva

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This winter, amongst other jobs I’ve upgraded the house bank to 3x100ah lithium batteries plus added insulation to the fridge and upgraded the icebox to a compressor plate fridge.

This I think opens the door to, shall I say auxiliary electric cooking onboard.

I’m not planning on removing the calor gas instal and Neptune cooker. However I am still reeling from the calor gas debacle of the last couple of seasons so minimising its use as far as practicality possible would be appreciated.

On basis of having a crap fridge and limited gas we’ve basically been veggie on board to minimise food poisoning risk and our cooking has been or towards the basic end. Now our battery bank clearly won’t support a 4 ring induction hob, boil water in 30seconds like we’ve at home, but it does open the question; what electric cooking appliances on board to you have and find are worth the storage space?

Currently I do not have an inverter but that will likely follow soon and I want to ensure I get an appropriately sized one…

Thanks
 
We make great use of the smallest size 'Instant Pot' computerised pressure cooker. Runs from our 3000W inverter (which is 1500 constant) perfectly. Fantastic kit.

We also use a small Air Fryer, that is at the absolute limit of the inverter. Fortunately we have a genset, so use that for the air fryer.

We have a double hotplate, halogen-First Mate loves he high quality pans and did not want to change to induction-and the small ring works from the inverter too.

Since the Calor bollox, I have been self filling my propane cylinders. Averages 12 quid a fill, cost 20 quid for the connecting pipe.

Get a big inverter.

We have 440AH of AGM in the house bank.
 
I’ve a single induction hob, and a 700w microwave. Both will run off my 1200w inverter, as will a travel kettle. I cook on electric when plugged in to shore power or if I’m out and about and the gas runs out. I have 230 ah of lead acid and 160w of solar. When I go off for longer trips (can’t at mo) I’ll put a load more solar on and rarely use the gas. Lead batteries will be replaced with lithium when they wear out.

As Rotrax says, get a nice big inverter, 3kw minimum will cover most electric cooking.
 
The Vango Sizzle induction hob is the weapon of choice for many electric galleys. Great little thing, costs under £100 and simply sits on top of a Plastimo Neptune cooker. We're on our second because SWMBO decided to use the gas grill and forgot to lift the Vango off first, and it began to sizzle. It still worked afterwards but it seemed sensible to replace it.

2*800w induction rings, it is certainly rather weedy compared to a domestic cooker, but you get used to it.

Our other galley items are: 1400w air fryer, toaster, and Remoska electric oven.
A Ninja or similar multi use device would probably make a lot of sense but we don't have one (yet).

I'm a big fan of electric cooking. Much less background heat given off. No more soot on your pans. It's just clean, easy, neat. Like you, we kept the gas system, but it's not been turned on for months now.

You do need to be able to replace the power you use. We have 1350w of new bifacials and despite using as much power as we want for cooking and everything else, we never fail to get back to 100% every day. But then again we are in the Caribbean...
 
We use a single portable induction hob placed on top of our origo alcohol stove retained for a backup along with 5 litres of meths and now not used for 3 years.
We use a completely portable EcoFlow delta max 2 lithium Powerpack as our combined 2400w 240v inverter/mppt solar controller/168ah lipo4 battery and computerised high speed charger and linked by the EcoFlow alternator charger to a further 200ah of lipo4 batteries. They both have remote monitoring and remote control by app system.
We arn’t gimballed as our yacht is a trailer sailer made cruiser so we don’t do many long passages needing to cook underway in poor conditions whilst we do live/cruise for months onboard at times.
IMG_6344.jpeg

IMG_6442.jpeg
 
Sea Change said:
The Vango Sizzle induction hob is the weapon of choice for many electric galleys. Great little thing, costs under £100 and simply sits on top of a Plastimo Neptune cooker. We're on our second because SWMBO decided to use the gas grill and forgot to lift the Vango off first, and it began to sizzle. It still worked afterwards but it seemed sensible to replace it.

2*800w induction rings, it is certainly rather weedy compared to a domestic cooker, but you get used to it.

Our other galley items are: 1400w air fryer, toaster, and Remoska electric oven.
A Ninja or similar multi use device would probably make a lot of sense but we don't have one (yet).

I'm a big fan of electric cooking. Much less background heat given off. No more soot on your pans. It's just clean, easy, neat. Like you, we kept the gas system, but it's not been turned on for months now.

You do need to be able to replace the power you use. We have 1350w of new bifacials and despite using as much power as we want for cooking and everything else, we never fail to get back to 100% every day. But then again we are in the Caribbean...
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Thanks, that’s really useful to know. I currently have 200w of solar which has been more than ample the last few years.

However as you’ll undoubtedly know, the price of solar is tumbling all the time. When I looked last week I could get 2x200w bi facial panels - so ~460w effective in a form factor little bigger than the existing panels for £150.
 
Grith said:
We use a single portable induction hob placed on top of our origo alcohol stove retained for a backup along with 5 litres of meths and now not used for 3 years.
We use a completely portable EcoFlow delta max 2 lithium Powerpack as our combined 2400w 240v inverter/mppt solar controller/168ah lipo4 battery and computerised high speed charger and linked by the EcoFlow alternator charger to a further 200ah of lipo4 batteries. They both have remote monitoring and remote control by app system.
We arn’t gimballed as our yacht is a trailer sailer made cruiser so we don’t do many long passages needing to cook underway in poor conditions whilst we do live/cruise for months onboard at times.
View attachment 191631

View attachment 191632
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Sounds a neat modular setup!
 
Minerva, what is the nature of your cruising plans, as this may make a big difference?

In many locations - southern UK, France, Med, Baltic etc - many people are in harbours with shore power most of the time. In which case to minimise gas usage we
(a) use a portable induction hot plate (like Grith) which is only used in harbour; and
(b) always fill two thermos flasks of boiling water pre departure.
Doing this the Camping Gas cylinder, which is used when on anchorage on on moorings, lasts for ages.

I am less convinced about doing all cooking off an invertor, but clearly some manage it. Only worth the expense of the kit if somewhere like the Caribbean I expect. (We spend about £50 Pa on gas, so £500 of kit would be over 10 years payback).
 
Nothing overly glamorous Dunedin - the boats based in Oban area and usually spend a week in May and three in July aboard plus weekends. I certainly don’t need electric cooking, but I can see some benefits…

The nucleus of the idea may be from wanting to get a decent coffee maker on board…
 
dunedin said:
Only worth the expense of the kit if somewhere like the Caribbean I expect. (We spend about £50 Pa on gas, so £500 of kit would be over 10 years payback).
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If we didn't cook with electricity, we'd probably have half the battery bank, so that would have saved about £450, at the prices I paid four years ago. But we'd still want the big inverter for running high powered tools and, especially, the hoover. For anybody with a mildly leaky boat, a 1kw wet and dry vac is a bit of a life changer.
Solar is now so cheap that the cost is almost a rounding error.
 
Quite a coincidence this post as the boat I viewed this afternoon was the only one I've seen that has electric cooking - an induction hob and a microwave, rather than gas and, I must admit, it appeals.
It's also the only NC11 I've seen that has a generator and an extra battery. It may have a larger inverter as well but I couldn't find a schematic in the manual so the broker is going to ask the owner.
I think I'd like to replace the microwave with a combi if I can find one that fits ( assuming I buy it!)IMG_4573.jpg
 
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Minerva said:
Nothing overly glamorous Dunedin - the boats based in Oban area and usually spend a week in May and three in July aboard plus weekends. I certainly don’t need electric cooking, but I can see some benefits…

The nucleus of the idea may be from wanting to get a decent coffee maker on board…
Click to expand...
For a few weeks a year sticking with gas - plus a £50 portable induction hob for in harbour use - is definitely the best financial and pragmatic solution.
Size the invertor for the coffee maker - which probably doesn’t need huge amounts of power (son drove a Nissan Micra to Mongolia and back with an installed Nespresso machine :-j. No fancy batteries for that)
 
Sea Change said:
You can't just dangle that and not tell the rest of the story!
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This - Mongol Rally - The Adventurists

Also drove back solo - a long way. Then claims to be the “fastest car round Nuremburgring - with an installed coffee maker”
(In a heavily patched up Nissan Micra it was probably a few hours off the overall lap record)
 
I have to say, the idea of electric cooking on board pleases me. Gas is the most terrifying thing on a boat IMO.

In our case, however, the expense of converting from gas just wouldn’t be justified by the amount of cooking we do on board, so we will just stick to turning the gas off and on at the bottle immediately before and after using it. We do also have a propane and CO alarm.
 
We still have our gas connected but the induction hob just sits on top of the cooker, we have not used the gas for the last two years, I also fitted a small microwave so that with a small travel kettle does all we seem to need, SWMBO still wants to keep the oven just in case. All runs of our Victron 1600w mutliplus with no issues
 
There are now mains voltage battery packs

A better solution than inverters. There was a recent thead mentioned Bluetti I think it was.
 
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