- Solar cooking is the simplest, safest, most convenient way to cook food without consuming fuels or heating up the kitchen.
- The first solar cooker we know of was invented by Horace de Saussure, a Swiss naturalist experimenting as early as 1767
- Box Cookers – This type of cooker has been the advantage of slow, even cooking of large quantities of food. Variations include slanting the face toward the sun and the number of reflectors.
- With box cookers, the food will cook more quickly if it is divided into several smaller pots instead of having it all in one large pot.
- Solar cooking is not only fun but it’s a great educational tool. Solar Box Cookers, constructed using cardboard, newspaper, aluminum foil, and a piece of glass will typically cook at temperatures between 225 – 275 F.
- Panel Cookers – In this design, various flat panels concentrate the sun’s rays onto a pot inside a plastic bag or under a glass bowl. The advantage of this design is that they can be built in an hour or so for next to nothing.
- Panel Cookers require only one box, aluminum foil, a jar and an oven bag, and can be constructed in less than an hour.
- Parabolic Cookers – These are usually concave disks that focus the light onto the bottom of a pot. The advantage is that foods cook about as fast as on a conventional stove. The disadvantage is that they are complicated to make, they must be focused often to follow the sun, and they can cause burns and eye injury if not used correctly.
- A good first food to try is a small quantity of rice, since it is fairly easy to cook and looks very different cooked than it does raw. Chicken or fish is also very easy to cook.
- There’s no need to rotate the oven to follow the sun, though it will improve cooking times
- A solar cooker is like a hot box, in which we can cook our food without any cooking gas or kerosene, electricity, coal or wood.
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