At the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, a student designed something pretty interesting — TV dinners you can cook in your washing machine. Yes, we said washing machine; and yes, you can cook the food right along with your laundry.
Iftach Gazit designed Sous La Vide bags to cook foods like fish, steak, and vegetables in the washing machine without soap or dirty water getting into the food. While this may sound too gross to be true, the concept is actually pretty simple.
Sous La Vide bags use the sous vide cooking process, which involves placing food in a vacuum-sealed bag, and cooking the food in a temperature-controlled water bath. Because Gazit’s bags are made from waterproof materials (Tyvek paper and another plastic bag layer inside), all of the dirt and funk from your clothes stays out of the bags, and the laundry soap stays out of the Sous La Vide bags as well.
Gazit realized the conditions of a washing machine are very similar to those of a sous vide cooking bath. If you want to cook meat or something that requires longer cooking, set your washing machine to synthetics (or polyester). You can cook vegetables on the cotton setting, for instance.
Although this may sound silly, Gazit has a very serious inspiration. He saw a homeless blogger describe a laundromat as one of the most useful places because you can clean your laundry, fill your water bottles, find an electrical outlet to charge devices, rest, use the restroom, and maybe even use the internet.
Gazit’s Sous La Vide bags allow you to also cook a meal and a side dish at the laundromat while you do a load of laundry. “The laundry dinner is not intended solely for the homeless, but much rather for us all: a product that reflects on our taste, our economic ability, and our culture,” he adds.
