Wonder Bag Cooker – How to Sew

wonder-bag

What is a Wonder Bag?

In looking for off-grid cooking methods, I stumbled upon this Wonder Bag cooking method. There are a few variations in design for these cookers and from what I read, the original style was called a Hay Box. This was literally a box, filled with hay that was used as insulation. The hay was stuffed around a pre-heated pot and the box was closed up, keeping the heat inside the pot to cook the food.

How Does It Cook?

The way a wonder bag or hay box works is similar to a crock-pot, low and slow for a long time. Basically, you are heating liquid in a stock pot, along with the ingredients that you wish to cook. Cook this at a boil for 10 minutes over heat, like on the stove or over a campfire, then place the pot into the bag to finish cooking over the course of the day. The insulating properties of the wonder bag maintain the temperature to cook the food. This works best when the pot is full and has a liquid base, so soups, stews, and chili work well.

The bag can fit a range of pot sizes and can be custom-made to fit a larger or smaller pot, so it’s quite versatile. The only down-side from a pot perspective is you need something with handles that will fit into the wonder bag. A saucepan with a long handle isn’t going to fit, unless you customize the bag to accommodate this. While the wonder bag is not a completely off-grid cooking source, it would be great to use during a power outage when your heat sources might be limited. For example, you could heat up the pot on a Coleman stove or gas burner and finish it in the bag, conserving fuel for another use.

I put together this video tutorial on how to sew a wonder bag. This is also my first project made on my new treadle sewing machine. 🙂