The amazing Wonderbag no electricity slow cooker — check it out

This post is sponsored by Wonderbag. I received a Wonderbag for purposes of review; all opinions in this post, however, are my own.

One of the cool things about blogging is sometimes I get the chance to try out and tell you about cool things. 🙂 Today’s cool thing: The Wonderbag, a heat retention cooker which allows food that has been brought to a boil to continue slow cooking without the use of electricity or other fuel source.  (It’s basically a fabric drawstring bag filled with repurposed foam chips for insulation.) So let’s take a tour!

When I received the Wonderbag, it was smooshed up and packed in a tidy plastic square — so you wonder: How would you cook anything in here?

Once fluffed up and settled out, however, The Wonderbag expands to a good size to fit a cooking pot or Dutch oven — in context here next to my coffee cup so you can see it actual size. (Note: This is somewhat bulky to store. I’m actually thinking I might keep it in my car when not in use; I was reading Amazon reviews and people were saying The Wonderbag is also fantastic for transporting frozen food back from the grocery store, because it’s so super insulated!)

When you release the drawstring, the Wonderbag opens quite wide. Here I have a potholder on the bottom, since it suggests using a potholder or a towel to avoid scorching the bottom of the Wonderbag when transferring hot pots from the stove.

(Sorry for the terrible lighting on these photos, since it was a dark and stormy day while I was cooking here!) I decided to try one of the summer “taco truck” recipes they sent over, salsa chicken, because it was pretty much like the salsa chicken I usually make in my slow cooker and I thought it would be fun to compare apples to apples (or chicken to chicken, as it were…).

So here I used some boneless skinless chicken breast and a jar of salsa, which I brought to a boil on the stove in a 5 quart Dutch oven and then simmered covered for another 30 minutes. Without opening the lid, I then transferred the Dutch oven to the Wonderbag.

I covered the Wonderbag with its insulated cover, drew the drawstring as tight as possible, and left it untouched for about 3.5 hours to slow cook the rest of the way.

Ta-da! Salsa chicken. You can see that it is completely cooked through, with no pink. As compared to the regular slow cooker version, it’s much moister — the slow cooker tends to dry out the chicken a bit by the time it’s cooked through. It was, however, a bit more difficult to shred.

The taste? Identical! And yummy. 🙂 The Wonderbag would be great to transport food to a potluck, picnic, tailgate, campsite or other event where you want hot food but don’t have access to an electricity source. It’s also useful for people with food allergies as an easy way to bring your own food to events without the worry of cross contamination.

But wait, here’s the even cooler part: Buy one, give one

Learn more about Wonderbag and find more recipes on their website, their Facebook, their blog, or read some reviews and pick up your own Wonderbag on Amazon. But here’s the coolest part about Wonderbag: While they are neat and useful for those of us in the U.S., they can be a game changer for women in Africa.

For every Wonderbag purchased in the U.S., one is donated to a family in need in Africa.

Founded in 2008 in South Africa to ease social, health, economic and environmental impacts of wood fire cooking, the Wonderbag empowers women across Africa to participate in more activities outside of the home enhancing their quality of life. Wonderbag also has dramatic health & environmental effects by lowering smoke inhalation diseases and deaths, saving water, reducing carbon footprint and minimizing deforestation.

One Wonderbag per year saves 1.7 trees, 1000 liters of water and 1,248 hours of time not spent collecting firewood. 1 job is created for every 1,000 bags sold. 700,000 bags have been sold.

Since food just has to be brought to a boil and then can cook the rest of the way in The Wonderbag, it can save hours a day formerly spent cooking over wood fires.

I think I’ll try rice next, and then maybe tackle some more of the recipes in the included booklet. What would you make in your Wonderbag?