Wonderbag Slow Cooker

We love our electric slow cooker at home but how can we use one on the boat?  The answer is the Wonderbag Slow Cooker. 

This is an insulated bag that holds a pot inside.  The idea is that you heat up the pot and contents on the stove for 15-20 minutes then put it in the bag for 3 hours, thus, the slow cooker.  It will hold 140 degrees for 2 hours.  This saves using a lot of propane. 

These bags are made by women in Africa.  Wonderbag sells these and for each one sold they give one to an African family.  This saves the women who have to cook countless hours tending a pot on a fire.  It also saves about 5 trees per family every year.  It reduces the deforestation in parts of Africa.  It also reduces the pollution and gases that harm our atmosphere from open fires burning all day.    Read more about it online.  When you use one of these you are not only saving propane, you are saving the planet and helping African women gain more time to be productive in other ways. 

I have the large size, it’s about 19” in diameter, and about 8” high.  It holds a 4-8 quarts size pot.  It’s great for Chili, Spaghetti Sauce, Pork Roast, stews, and cooking dry beans.  There is a recipe book available with it or you could probably convert any slow cooker recipe to use with it.   The rule of thumb that I use is to allow maybe an hour to twice the time as an electric slow cooker.  For something like spaghetti sauce that you might simmer on a stove top for 45 minutes, I’d allow 2 hours after cooking the sauce stovetop for 15 minutes.   

For black beans we soaked them overnight, brought to a boil for a few minutes then put them in the Wonderbag for 3 ½ hours.  What’s nice about it is that you just fix it and forget it. We could have left the beans in there 6 hours and they would be fine.  And if we are away from the boat we need not worry about a pot cooking on the stove.

If you have a good tight fitting lid this can also be used to carry your hot dish to the covered dish dinner on the beach.  And on the flip side, because it is so well insulated it can also keep things cold not just hot.

So how do you store something so bulky on the boat?  I went to IKEA and bought a 20”x20” pillow cover in their “bone pile” sale department for $5.  I stuffed it with the Wonderbag  and made a great cockpit pillow.  No pot inside of course. But it would be very easy to sew one too.  I plan to waterproof mine with KIWI spray but if I have a chance I’ll make one out of Sunbrella that matches my canvas on the boat. 

Now you have a great boat pillow and you need not worry about the storage space needed for the Wonderbag. 

Due to Covid they are out of stock at Wonderbag right now but I found several of them on Ebay for sale.  The cost is about $59. A substitute appears to be the “Hungry Fan Thermal bag”. It’s a knock off of the wonderbag.