Wonderbag: Can this non-electric slow cooker replace the real deal?

Can this colourful bag save you even more on your energy bills?

The Wonderbag comes in a variety of vibrant designs (The Independent)

It seems like there’s a new kitchen appliance to add to your counter almost every day, in a bid to help you jump on the latest trend of cooking – or, at the very least, help you with efficiency. We’ve reviewed air fryers, slow cookers, multicookers – the lot. Many of these machines aim to make your life easier, as well as saving a bit of money. But now it’s time we tested the Wonderbag.

Dubbed a “revolutionary, non-electric slow cooker”, the bag uses heat-retention to ensure your food continues to cook for up to eight hours after being placed inside it.

Now, while it may seem so, it’s not a magic bag. You’ll need to bring whatever food you’re cooking to the boil on your hob before placing the lidded pot inside the Wonderbag and securing it tightly using the lid and drawstring toggle.

The perk of standard slow cookers is that they use little electricity (between 75-150W on a low setting and up to 210W on a high one) compared with an oven. If we consider that the average gas hob uses around 2,000W and that it takes about 10 minutes to bring a pot to the boil, there’s an average saving of around 15p to be made.

The Wonderbag boasts no need to use a battery, plug or any type of fuel – music to our ears amidst the current cost-of-living crisis. But is it too good to be true? Fear not – as always, IndyBest is on hand to put the product through its paces, so you can be sure about what to invest in (and what to swerve).

(Amira Arasteh)

How we tested the Wonderbag

The Wonderbag website is full of information, including top tips and answers to any questions first-time buyers or users might have. As this was our first time testing the non-electric slow cooker, we chose to follow a recipe on the website, opting for Irish beef stew.

The website does mention that trial and error is part of the process (and the fun) with your Wonderbag, so we also tried a second recipe – slow cooking a ham hock – to see the difference with this fattier type of meat.

We bought diced beef from the supermarket and the ham hock from a local butcher. We purposefully chose standard and affordable cuts of meat, as this is what most of us are likely to use when cooking at home. The diced beef cost £3.79 a pack, while we secured a single ham hock for £3.50.

We also tested making a stew, where other ingredients (potatoes, carrots and the like) were added to the pot, as well as cooking a piece of meat simply immersed in a stock liquid mixture with onions.

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Wonderbag: Was £62.99, now £59.99, Wonderbagworld.com

The Wonderbag works by encasing your cooking pot, to keep in the heat (Amira Arasteh)

• Rating: 3.5/5
• Sizes available: Medium and large
• Handles: Available in large

Irish beef stew in the Wonderbag

Slow cooking (for our family, anyway) is all about minimising hassle, so we went for an easy recipe. A stew is a great one, as it just involves a bit of chopping and dicing, and throwing everything in to cook together. Sort of.

Boiling on the hob for 20 minutes was simple enough, and then it was the first go at using the Wonderbag. It took a while to puff up but this is a necessary step, as the Wonderbag is transferred as sustainably as possible by reducing its packaging size via shrink wrapping. Once puffed up, transferring the pot and sealing the bag with the drawstring toggle was easy.

Although using a slow cooker is minimal stress, as there’s no open flame – as there would be if we were slow cooking on the hob – there was even less worry using the Wonderbag. Truth be told, we actually fell asleep, which isn’t a problem, because, while the Wonderbag continues to cook the food using heat-retention technology, it’s not lit or connected to any power source. That said, we did set an alarm, so we wouldn’t over-cook the dish. For us, that’s the one downside about slow cooking: it’s slooow, and, as naturally impatient people, we were tested.

Upon removing the pot from the Wonderbag and lifting up the lid, everything looked and smelled delicious, so we served ourselves a healthy portion and tucked in. Cutting into the dish, the beef was cooked and tasted good, although it wasn’t as tender as we’d expect from slow-cooked meat. We weren’t sure if it was the 20 minutes on the hob that overcooked the meat slightly, or if less time was needed in the Wonderbag.

However, as the website notes, using the Wonderbag is a bit of a trial and error process, so considering the food looked, smelled and tasted nice (and, most importantly, was cooked through), we decided to make a second attempt at things.

If serving up food for a family meal or a dinner party, a nice touch is that the Wonderbag comes in a variety of pretty patterns, so wouldn’t look out of place on a table setting, should you wish to continue to keep the dish warm inside the pot for a bit longer.

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Ham hock in the Wonderbag

There was a lot less prep involved in this recipe – simply boiling water to create a stock mixture and slicing some onions to accompany the ham hock inside the pot. After 30 minutes, we moved the pot inside the Wonderbag and fastened everything in place to allow for optimal heat retention and slow cooking.

Since this was a thinner mixture, we were less concerned with checking on the food than we had been with the beef stew. We’d also made this dish before using a slow-cooker appliance, so felt a lot more confident in general, remembering how well that dish had turned out.

Five hours on and we went to remove the pot. Placing the ham on a wooden board, we set about cutting the fat aside and pulling apart the meat. To be completely honest, the ham didn’t pull apart as softly and easily as we remember when we used the other slow cooker appliance. Our previous attempt resembled more of a pulled pork, whereas this endeavour left us with something similar to gammon.

Was it cooked? Yes. Did it look appetising? For sure. And the taste? It was good – similar to many gammon dishes we’ve had in various pubs. So, we would say this was a success – only dropping a few points, as, personally, we’d have preferred a more tender-cooked result.

Buy now £59.99, Wonderbagworld.com

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The verdict

While the Wonderbag certainly has many redeeming qualities, we’re not sure we’d swap our slow cooker for one – at least not just yet. It would definitely be worth playing around with the time spent boiling the food on the hob before transferring the pot to the Wonderbag to see if that improved the results.

These days, the price of a slow cooker is around the same price as the Wonderbag (currently on sale for £59.99) – you can snap up a standard Crockpot 6.5l appliance for £43 at Argos.co.uk.

We’ve previously made the same ham hock dish as above using a Crockpot slow cooker and the meat was cooked to such a tender state, it fell off the bone easily. So, while we’re a huge fan of the idea of the Wonderbag – and the food was cooked and tasted nice – unfortunately, the same texture and consistency wasn’t achieved when cooking either the beef stew or the ham hock as when using the more traditional slow cooker.

That said, it depends on what kind of texture you want from your meat. If you’re a fan of tender, pulled-pork-style meat, this might not be the appliance or method for you. However, if you would normally cook your ham hock a little more and achieve a gammon-like texture, this could be the kitchen tool you never knew you needed.

What’s more, the Wonderbag will save you a few more pennies, as it’s slightly more energy efficient than a low-wattage slow cooker, simply using the heat-retention technology of its material to continue cooking the food. It’s also a better space-saving option, as the Wonderbag can be neatly folded into a cupboard. In fact, the Wonderbag offers a lot more peace of mind from a safety perspective, particularly if you have a busy home with kids, as even a slow cooker plugged into the mains can be a concern for some parents.

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