Nature Crafts

Solar Cooking

By editor ⋅ June 27, 2007 ⋅ Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I cooked my first meal in a homemade solar cooker today - it was a broccoli cheese casserole that seemed a good choice to me, since I had no idea how my solar box cooker would work, and by the time I had the box constructed it was late afternoon already and I was running out of sun time.  The casserole meant cheating a little, because the 1/2 cup of onion and 2 cups of chopped broccoli were sauted on the stove, prior to mixing in the solar cooking pot with 1/2 cup of instant rice, mushrooms, 2 cans of mushroom soup and grated cheese.  This only required pre-heating the oven for thirty minutes, then an hour or so of actual heating the food, sufficient to melt the cheese.  As a test dish it was pretty successful, and gave me an indication of how hot the solar oven would get and how to position and work it properly.

Cooking with the sun is an idea that intrigues me, yet I had no idea how popular it was until I began researching the subject last week.  There is wonderful information on making all kinds of solar cookers at http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page, along with recipes, safety tips and information on how solar cookers are being used in refugee camps in Africa and Thailand, where wood fuel is hard to come but sunshine is free and abundant. 

Solar cookers of various kinds make great science projects, teaching kids about the power of the sun as an alternate energy source.  Here are instructions on how to make a pizza box solar oven, a solar hot dog cooker or a solar powered marshmallow roaster.  Anything powerful enough to cook food obviously gets very hot, so adult supervision is a necessity.

The cardboard box solar cooker that I made should be good enough for a variety of solar cooking recipes.  I plan to try a few in the coming summer months, so will post an update on how well this style of cooker works.  One tip that I’ve learned already is to add a thin, black metal drip pan or plate to the bottom of the tin foil lined inner box (which forms the oven area).  The black color absorbs heat from the sun rays reflecting against the foil lined walls then passes on the radiant heat to whatever black pot or container you are using to cook.  You could also cover cardboard with tin foil and paint it with non-toxic black paint, such as barbeque paint, for this purpose.