In response to the energy crisis, Barilla has introduced the new world to a forgotten method to cook perfect pasta AND save 80% energy on every bowl: Passive Cooking. The world found out through Influencers, celebrity chefs, updated the cooking times on packs, whatsapp bots and The Passive Cooker - a smart device that alerts you remotely of every step - was created first to help restaurants, but it was released open source so everyone can build their own. Barilla proved that the most innovative method of cooking pasta is also the oldest.

2022 was supposed to be a period of recovery after the pandemic crisis; instead, as the war between Russia and Ukraine escalated, it turned into the year of the biggest global energy crisis in 50 years.

The crisis affected many major economies, including Europe, and emerging and developing economies.

In fact, on household budgets, rising gas prices have had a significant impact, generating sky-high costs for basic activities such as heating homes and cooking. In recent years Barilla has been dedicating much effort to studying methods to help people lead more sustainable lives. That's how data appeared on a cooking method used in Italy since the 1800s until the economic boom of the 1960s. An effective and simple method that can save up to 80% of energy, but now totally forgotten. It was therefore clear that the most innovative way to cook pasta is also the oldest.

Pasta in Italy is like a religion, and many Italians are usually not very receptive to any change in how to do it. But once this was presented as a 100% traditional method that makes so much sense today, people were actually very open to try it and promote it. Very importantly, Barilla was very careful in communicating the right cooking times and provide the right tools so the pasta is always cooked to perfection. This way, hundreds of celebrity Italian chefs adopted the method and they have the REAL power of influencing italian households in trying the method themselves.

Upon landing on data on this old cooking method, we called it Passive Cooking, and decided it's the best time for the world to rediscover - the most innovative old method to cook pasta. It's as simple as - bringing water to a boil and cooking pasta with the heat off, reducing gas consumption and CO2 emissions by up to 80%. Currently, there are 440 millions pasta bowls being cooked in the world every day. So helping change the way people are used to cook pasta would not be easy.

The first studies regarding Passive Cooking were initiated by Barilla in April 2021. The research gave us very significant results from an energy-saving perspective.

In February 2022, the Ukraine-Russia conflict started the energy crisis.

At that time, technical studies on energy and CO2 emission savings were completed. To help families, the brand decided to start a concrete campaign to respond to the crisis. For this, it chose to revisit the steps and cooking times of Passive Cooking, turning an ancient method into a real innovation.

Therefore, in March 2022, the Barilla Chef Academy began testing all products again to achieve perfect al dente cooking even with Passive Cooking.

At the same time, work began on the open source device and Whatsapp BOT, so as to provide simple and tech-savvy methods to reintroduce the older, more innovative method of cooking pasta.

In April 2022, we started crafting the first prototypes of the device, shaping it up in a way to address the following necessities:

- A pleasant to eye object that could live everywhere around the kitchen

- A smart object, easily pairable with the smartphone via bluetooth

- A reliable tool that accurately measures the temperature of the pan to which is placed

In May 2022, the device design was approved. Instead of patenting the device, we decided to have it at everyone’s disposal, publishing all the project and footprints on open-source.

On October 6, 2022, Barilla launched the new method, including the open source device that can be replicated by everyone for free, the table of new cooking times, and the BOT on Whatsapp.

Passive Cooking was launched globally, showing how easy it is to cook perfect pasta al dente and save up to 80% energy. Celebrity chefs and global influencers made the method popular and challenged their followers to try it. Barilla added passive cooking timing for pasta al dente to each of their pasta types, on their website, their online recipes and packaging. A Whatsapp BOT was created for step by step guides to cook perfect pasta for any Barilla pasta type. We also created the Passive Cooker, a smart device that monitors and alerts and we gave it to restaurants. The device was released also open source so anyone could build it themselves and use it at home.

We made the path to change behavior for better as smooth as possible.

We re-studied the method to make it more effective for our products to achieve a perfect pasta.

We re-introduced the method through educational tutorials and recipes.

Involving chefs and KOLs, we incentivized the change. Then, we released a Whatsapp Bot and prototyped a special open source device to guide people to follow the right steps for Passive Cooking. If all the people use passive cooking ONCE, it would save enough energy to power the city of Rome for 7 years. We know for sure we nudged enough people to generate a tremendous online demand on how to adopt the method with a +370% increase on Google searches. And for a selected pool of partner restaurants, the device helped cutting off up to 30% of their energy bill costs.