We Spent the Day Solar Cooking - PREPAREDNESS ADVICE

An opportunity to practice solar cooking

Yesterday we went to the solar cook off in Nevada City. It was quite an enjoyable day and I learned more about solar ovens. Quite a few different types of food were successfully cooked. The day was a bit overcast which quickly revealed the shortcomings of some types of solar ovens. The box style all worked well, however the reflective and the parabolic both showed shortcomings.

The foods that were cooked included fresh vegetables, chicken, pumpkin, beans, corn bread and fruit cobbler. The reflective ovens took considerably longer to cook and in a couple of cases, the foods were finished in a box style.

The overall best oven was the Global Sun Oven which outperformed everything. A couple of the homemade box solar ovens came close. The Global Sun Ovens were hitting temperatures of between 275 – 300 degrees. The homemade box ovens were running from 35 to 50 degree cooler.

A homemade box solar oven that cooked well

An old cake cover being used to melt butter and honey

The parabolic solar oven is the only one that will let you fry foods. It works well on a bright sunny day, but on a cloudy day does not work well. The problem is that everytime a cloud cuts the sun off the oven immediately losses all of it’s heat. The other problem is that they take constant adjustment. The sun’s reflection has to be focused directly on the bottom of the pan, this requires constant corrections.

I made several videos which I intend to post. There is a bit of a learning curve so hopefully I will be improving with time. The one I am showing today is a friend showing you how he cooks on the dash of hisr vehicle. This gentleman regularly cooks his lunch in this manner. He places a jar containing the food between a windshield reflector and the glass.