We live in the Southwest and use our solar cookers year-round. Our large one works best when cooking meat, potatoes, stews and items that require a longer cooking time at a higher temperature. We don’t eat a lot of cakes, cookies or pies, but we have friends who cook all sorts of pastries with solar. We were introduced to solar cooking at our friends’ home about ten years back. We all lunched on a solar cooked meal, and my wife and I became instant solar cooker fans. The taste of solar cooked foods beats any other manner of cooking, hands down.
It gets hot in solar ovens. I was cooking brown rice last week and, before the wind came up, the inside thermometer said 325 degrees. After the cold wind came up, the temperature remained at 275. I’ve seen it at 375, too hot for what was cooking. To regulate the temperature, all you have to do is turn the oven slightly away from the direct sun. The only thing different from conventional stove cooking is planning ahead, just like cooking with a crockpot. If the wind’s going to blow, you need to start early. If the wind’s from the west, put the cooker up close to the east side of the house or place the cooker in the wind shadow created by walls and entryways.
With our large cooker, which is better insulated than the smaller one, when the glass is completely steamed over it’s time to eat. This is true, from our ten plus years of experience, with everything except grains. After the glass is steamed over when cooking grains, you need to let it stay in the oven a little while longer or the grain will be mushy. A little experimentation will probably be in order.
In the summer and on warm winter days, we prefer our smaller cooker for grains. The grains cook more slowly and have a better texture. On cold or windy days, or when cooking times need to fit into a tight schedule, we use the larger unit. When we have various items to cook and the day is cool or time is tight, we finish cooking the food in the larger cooker and then transfer the items from the smaller unit to the larger one. This is only necessary on cold, windy or tightly scheduled days.
There are lots of plans for solar cookers on the Internet. I built our smaller unit. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of building your own, you can contact Sun Oven, that’s our large cooker and we’ve had it for ten years with good service. at www.sunoven.com 1-800-408-7919 or search the Internet for other brands. We purchased our large unit over the Internet and saved quite a bit by shopping around. Give solar cooking a try, you’ll love the difference in taste, tenderness and moistness.
Image by davidgljay on flickr.com, Creative Commons By Attribution.
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