Ready meals fresh from the washing machine

Consumers can potentially cook their dinner and do a load of washing simultaneously if their ready meal is packed in Iftach Gazit’s Sous La Vie bags.

Gazit designed the bags as part of his industrial design course at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Tel Aviv. His prototype bags were made of waterproof Tyvek paper with an inner, sealed plastic bag to stop leaks. The bags featured fully packaged meals and sides dishes, with recommended washing temperatures and nutritional information laid out in the style of clothes labels.

The ready meals are vacuum sealed in the bags and then cooked by the sous-vide method in the washing machine as it completes a laundry cycle. As the vacuum-sealed food is immersed in hot water over a long period of time, the meals are evenly cooked and stay moist.

Gazit said, “Instead of following a sous-vide recipe and cooking a piece of meat at 58°C for two and a half hours, just set your washing machine to ‘synthetics’ for a long-duration program. Cooking vegetables? Set your machine to ‘cotton’ for a short-duration program.”

This cooking method could also suit homeless people, Gazit believes, as they can use the laundromat as a safe haven as they cook their food and wash their clothes.