The hidden gas cost: how much does cooking actually add to your bill?

Every meal has a stealth tax: utilities. Gas, electricity, water, and the oil you eventually have to dispose of. Most home cooks have zero intuition for what these add. Let's measure.

The four cooking modes

CostMyMeal's calc.ts uses these per-minute defaults:

• Boil: 0.04 kWh gas/min, 3 L water/session
• Fry: 0.06 kWh gas/min, 80 mL oil/session, 1 L water
• Bake: 0.07 kWh gas/min, 0.5 L water (60-min oven preheat counts)
• Raw: 0 gas, 1 L water (washing only)

A real-world example: 30-min stovetop boil in Seoul

• Gas: 0.04 × 30 = 1.2 kWh × ₩90/kWh = ₩108
• Water: 3 L × ₩0.9/L = ₩2.70
• Total utility: ~₩110/serving

Same recipe but in a 60-min oven (US)

• Gas: 0.07 × 60 = 4.2 kWh × $0.05/kWh = $0.21
• Water: 0.5 L × $0.0015/L = $0.001
• Oil: 10 mL × $0.5/L = $0.005
• Total: $0.22/serving = 4× more than boiling

Frying eats your wallet sideways

Frying adds 80mL oil per session — at $1.20/L for vegetable oil, that's $0.10 in oil alone, plus disposal fee. Over a year of frying chicken twice a week, that's $40+ in oil silently disappearing.

Verdict

Boil > raw > bake > fry, in cost order. If you're optimizing for absolute cheapness, your kitchen should look like a noodle shop, not a steakhouse.

Try it: same recipe, swap method = bake → boil in CostMyMeal. Watch utility line move 4×.