Solar cooking

[justme]

I just went over to Mikes and had dinner, he said he cooked it all in his solar ovens. Hey, it winter, I never realized they would get that hot in the winter time until he said that.

I then thought, well-- I melt the wax from the honey comb with the solar box. I have 62 honey bee hives.

Has anyone here tried this?

 

[GB]

The closest I have come to solar cooking is when we wanted to see if we could fry an egg on the boating docks at my camp.Had we used some fat we would have been able to eat it, but instead we just fused the egg to the dock.

 

[goboenomo]

We had a day this summer when it was 42 degress celcius.
I saw on the news that some lady baked cookies in her car.

It was quite funny.

It took a long time, and they didn't look very tasty. But it worked nonetheless.

 

[YT2095]

as a confirmed "Science Nerd" it`s only natural that I`ve done this

I used a 1.5 meter satelite dish and tinfoil. with the LND removed and a 250ml erlinmyer flask painted matt black in place, I make a nice cup of tea with it

I also had access to a fresnel lens and inadvertantly blew a hole in my friends driveway when we left to go an get a few beers (and forgot we`de left it set up doing nothing).

 

[justme]

He has two boxes that are insulated (about a foot thick all around except the top and that is glass or plastic) with a black interior.
He said he loves it in the summer, no heat in the house and for times like this morning, when he had to go away. I have a solar pre ho****er heater.

I think I am going to check this out futher. I am going to get him to let me watch him prepair a meal or two.

 

[Snoop Puss]

Justme, did you get any further with this? Anyone else got any other news?

We’re about to move to a remote site off grid and I’m looking at all kinds of ways to cut down on electricity use. It’s a sunny spot during the day time, chilly at night (there was frost there this morning, something I’ve rarely seen in Spain – two or three times in 16 years and absolutely never this late in the year). YT2095 has given me some advice on design, but I've not got much info about what it's actually like to solar cook.

The various sites I’ve seen that promote solar cooking show people using it for large-scale kitchens in Africa and elsewhere, as well as for individual families. I’ve also seen a site with an elderly lady using a solar cooker on a rooftop in Barcelona and two chefs, again in Barcelona, frying chicken and cooking a ratatouille-type sauce to go with it.

My question is, does anyone know what solar cookers are like to use? I’m obviously not going to be able to bake cakes because getting the temperature just so won’t be easy. But I am hoping to do roasts, stews, boil beans, etc. What I don’t know is whether this is really doable?

Does anyone have any experience of this kind of cooker they’d like to share?

 

[KathyJ]

try looking at The Solar Cooking Archive (solarcooking.org)
I've wanted to try my hand at making one, but haven't yet.

Lehman's - Products for Simple, Self-sufficient Living (lehmans.com) has some for sale - surprisingly, they can get up there in price. If I remember right, they had a small one for only $20. it's been a while since I looked at their site though.

 

[Snoop Puss]

Hi KathyJ. Thanks for the links. I've had a look at solarcooking.org. There's a whole heap of information there. As for the Lehman's cookers, I think the cheap one is one of those foil-lined screens you put inside car windscreens to reduce heat build-up when the car is parked. I've thought about trying one of those. One of the sites I've visited says that roasting bags around the pot work well with this kind of cooker.