Solar Cooking

[Dover]

I'm considering getting a solar cooker and am doing some research which I thought I'd share.
If you have any knowledge or experience with this method, please share it!





SOLAR OVEN-SOLAR COOKING-COOK WITH THE SUN!
Yes, you can cook almost any kind of food using the natural, free energy of the SUN!

Solar cooking is one of my passions. I have been a SOLAR COOKING - SOLAR OVEN enthusiast for almost 30 years now. I have learned many things that I can teach you about this wonderful, 'low tech' way of cooking. There is something magical about harnessing the power of our local star, the Sun.

http://www.cookwiththesun.com/

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Developing an intuitive feel for the dynamics of solar cooking
From Solar CookingJump to: navigation, search

Light fluffy materials are good heat insulatorsHave you ever wondered why you yourself didn't come up with the idea of the solar box cooker? Why didn't it occur to you or me naturally that a double-walled, foiled, cardboard box covered with a sheet of glass could easily reach cooking temperatures? I think I know why.
We don't seem to have an innate grasp of what makes for a good insulating material. I remember that when I bought my brick house in cold Seattle, it made sense to me that the bricks would hold in the warmth during the winter. This turned out to be a completely false assumption.

On a cold day, imagine putting on a vest or shirt made out of tiles (analogous to small bricks). You know that you would feel even colder. We know from our experience of trying to keep our body warm that soft, light, fluffy materials work best. The food in the oven is like our bodies – an insulating material that would make our body cold would also lower the temperature of the food and reduce the cooking capacity of the oven.

Now that we understand that light, fluffy materials are good insulators, then let's see if we can get a sense for how much insulating capacity the various components of a cardboard solar cooker have. People newly introduced to solar box cookers find it unfathomable that such high temperatures could be contained in such a simple box, perhaps made of only a few layers of cardboard. Obviously the cardboard is able to keep the heat from leaking out. One way to access our intuitive sense for this is to imagine that you have to pick up a hot pot handle with your bare hand. That, of course, would be painful. What if you used a piece of paper between your hand and the handle. You would probably be burned just as badly, only an instant later than before. Now imagine using a piece of corrugated cardboard as a potholder. You could be pretty sure that the heat would never reach your hand with enough intensity to burn you. Next imagine you used two pieces of cardboard, then two pieces separated by a few centimeters of air space. You quickly get a feeling for how much insulating effect such a configuration would provide.

We understand now how the cooker holds the heat, but why does so much heat build up inside the cooker in the first place? We've all heard that this is due to the greenhouse effect. While glass has been available for centuries, the idea that you could use it to trap enough heat to actually cook food has occurred only recently. The greenhouse effect causes the heat from sunlight to accumulate inside any closed space with a glazed opening (e.g., a parked car). Why was this missed for so long? I believe it was because part of the greenhouse process is invisible to our human eyes.

There are two principal kinds of light operating in the solar oven: normal visible light and invisible infrared light. When you look into a solar cooker, the visible light inside doesn't seem to be that much brighter or more concentrated than the sunlight striking us as we stand and look in. Our bodies are certainly not getting hot enough to burn, much less cook, so intuition tells us that food in the oven wouldn't cook either. Or intuition is right as far as it goes. The visible light isn't intense enough to do the cooking, but an invisible transformation is taking place...cont'd

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Developing_an_intuitive_feel_for_the_dynamics_of_solar_cooking



Solar Cooking Groups/Sites -

http://solarcooking.org/
http://www.solarovens.org/
http://solarcookers.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker



Make your own solar cooker:
http://solarcooking.org/plans/
http://www.knowledgehound.com/topics/solarcoo.htm
http://www.cookwiththesun.com/solar.htm





HotPot - Self-contained Solar Cooking Pot
The HotPot cooking vessel consists of a dark pot suspended inside a clear pot with a clear lid.

[madeline_con]

1. There are a lot of good orgs that help out in 3rd world countries

by donating solar ovens.

[Dover]

2. Yes. Seems like it might be good thing for THIS third world country as well.

Well not third quite yet...

I will be curious to see what cooking this way is like, and what kind of learning curve,
limitations if any, as well as ease or difficulty is involved.

[xfundy]

3. I've also been researching this

There are tons of links out there, many of which show you how to build your own, including one I'm about to try, using a silver reflective windshield cover (sunscreen) such as those at the dollar store. Others use foil-lined cardboard boxes, and all require a dark/black cooking pot.

Glass would probably keep the wind from cooling it down, but I;m definitely headed toward building my own, and you can always find free windows, etc on craigslist. I;m trying to figure out how to build a greenhouse from free windows/sliding glass doors/ shower doors.

[soothsayer]

4. I have this one, and it's really neat!

The HotPot.

Bought it after lots of research, but also because when you bought one from this place (or at least back when I did, I think) you also funded one for a third world country. http://www.she-inc.org/hotpot.php

I haven't technically cooked anything in it except baked apples, but it was really, really awesome at it, and I have full confidence that it would cook other great food. It really was amazing how quickly it heated up and how hot it got. Quite amazing. If I can recall where I put it, I might try to cook chicken or something in it this weekend.

more ovens here http://www.solarovens.net/

I also have a pyromid grill, which is a super efficient charcoal cooker that can cook a whole meal on just a handful of briquettes or other random fuel like sticks or sterno or even dried cow patties. Folds up to an inch thick and is totally portable. Heats to 1000 degrees in 5 mins. They used to make them for boy scouts and for rescue workers, but for some reason stopped manufacturing them.

http://www.wooska.com/pyhome.aspx

here's one for sale on ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/PYROMID-COOKING-SYSTEM-GRILL-PYROMID'S-STOVE-3-DAYS-ONL_W0QQitemZ150278919198QQcmdZViewItem?IMSfp=TL08080411122r2398

[IDemo]

5. I made this one a month ago out of cardboard and aluminum foil

I have cooked a pot of split pea soup, a cornish game hen, and a pot of chicken stew. Also did very well with some Rhodes bread. These are quite simple to make but don't quite get the high temps that a 'Sun Oven' or other enclosed box design will. They require a turkey roasting bag placed around the pot to retain heat. An oven thermometer placed inside the bag showed 300° last week.

[NMDemDist2]

6. I have a thread in Frugal about cheap solar ovens

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=353x2044