Solar Oven Cooking

As we edge toward a world beyond fossil fuels, how many of you have experimented with solar oven cooking? I've just set up my oven for another lay-back summer of solar meals.

Last October, the daytime chill in the air rendered solar oven cooking done for the season. The convenience and freedom from my stovetop carried me through the heat of summer. With my laziness toward food preparation in general, it was so easy to slip a frozen lasagna into the solar oven at about one p.m. and take it out at five for a sumptuous repast. As the days cooled, however, timing lengthened until even six hours would barely thaw the meal, even when using the reflector panels to increase the radiant heat.

Such is the nature of cooking without fossil fuels. There's only so much heat in a winter sun.

In winter, changing over to the crockpot isn't much of a stretch. Turning on the stove to sauté a stir-fry or simmer a soup or stew contributes to heating the house not covered by the furnace. I do miss that ability to put foods in the solar oven and just walk away, knowing nothing will scorch.

A solar oven gets no hotter than 250 degrees F. With the black metal pans that came with my kit from Emergency Essentials in Utah, I can whip up a rice dish along with small pieces of meat and vegetables without having to monitor it.

To cook rice, for example, pour the desired amount of rice into the pan, add jus enough water to cover the rice, and put on the lid. Layering chunks of fish, chicken, meat, or slices of sausage on top of the rice adds flavor to the dish. If you prefer to sauté meat beforehand, no problem. It assures the meat will be thoroughly cooked. Vegans can layer vegetables and legumes over the rice or cook the veggies separately in the other pan. Mix and match as you please.

This is a very slow method of cooking. No searing or sautéing happens here. It's definitely a put it together and leave it alone method. The heat never gets high enough to burn the food. You can go shopping or do some errands. If you're stuck in traffic or at an appointment that's keeping you longer than expected, no worries. Food will simmer just fine in the sun. It's the summertime answer to the crockpot without using electricity. The kitchen stays nice and cool … and so do you.

Most people don't think much about what's beyond that wall socket. All our electric devices drawing from the grid strains the system to the point where energy companies need to enforce brown outs to preserve the infrastructure. In California, whenever there's a high wind advisory, the power shuts down to prevent wildfires. This doesn't work well for stores that sell perishable products displayed in freezers.

As we move away from fossil fuels, we need ways to not use energy at all. There are still folks who use wood to heat their homes and sometimes cook on wood stoves, but we've already decimated our forests enough.

Solar ovens, of course, are not new. They've been around since the 1970s. You can purchase a "kit" as I did, or you can make one insulating a cardboard box with Styrofoam, and black paint or paper. In a pinch, quilted windshield shades can work. Ever wonder if you could heat up a Lean Cuisine on your dashboard? Well, you can.

Perhaps now we're just getting silly, but you get the idea, right? Here's a link to a YouTube video that shows how to make a solar oven with only a few household materials.

Although you can cook almost anything in a solar oven, breads don't do very well. When I tried baking a cornbread mix, it came out spongy and chewy. It tasted okay, of course, but texturally, it was questionable. In fact, don't bother.

I haven't tried large steaks, either. That's for the grill, another outdoor cooking method. Heating or sterilizing water needs to be done in a glass container and also has to heat up to at least 165 degrees F in order to properly sterilize it. You can use a solar oven, in fact my kit included a thermometer and instructions for heating water.  Or paint a large spray container black to concentrate the heat and leave it in the sun for washing.

Water within the food, such as vegetables, will be enough to keep the meal from drying out too much. This summer, however, my rice dishes came out a bit crunchy, so I'm wondering if it was because the rice itself had been stored too long.

Now that summer temperatures have finally arrived in the Great Basin, I've cleaned and set up tonight's dinner to initiate the season. I'll be experimenting and relearning this cooking technique all summer, so I'll pass along whatever I learn in future posts. Meanwhile, I hope you'll experiment with solar oven cooking wherever you live. I'd love to know how it works for those who live in higher latitudes and cloudier weather conditions.

Let me know what you think in the comments. In fact, if you've used a solar oven before, please share your experiences with it.

Bon appeite, and as Jacque Pepin says when closing his videos, "Happy cooking."

All photos taken by Sue Cauhape

If you enjoyed this essay, feel free to explore other writings in the Ring Around the Basin Archives. I also love to read your comments, so let’s start a conversation.