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I believe I've read here of a few folks who have solar ovens or solar cookers. As HiW mentioned on another thread, it would actually be a useful to have a thread collecting people's experiences (both good and bad) with their cookers, where they got them, what's available, their limitations/strengths, etc...
So here's my experience:
This past spring, I bought a solar oven at a local "emergency preparedness" store (we have lots of those around here). I've been using it nearly daily (except for cloudy/stormy days, which are rare during summer around here). It is the Solar Oven Society "Sport" model, and consists of a heavily insulated thick black plastic "box" with an insulated (double paned) clear plexi lid, and detachable polished aluminum reflectors. It also came with a thermometer and two dark graniteware pots. They are available online at the "biggies" like amazon, but I will give the most informative link below. Of course there are many other brands and sizes available.
The oven's geometric shape allows it to be inverted for lower and higher sun angles. As I said, it also has a reflector, which I haven't used much yet, but I'm sure I will need it more often as the sun angle gets lower for winter and the useable energy from the sun is less. It generally cooks without the reflectors at about 250 - 270 degrees. With the reflector in good sun, around 300 plus degrees. It's easy to use; you basically prepare whatever you are going to cook, pop it in the oven in the morning in the sun, and forget about it until late afternoon (or until it's done). The nice thing is that you can generally leave the food in the oven much longer than you need to, so you don't have to hover over it and keep track of the time. It's very hard to burn anything. I've only succeeded to do that once by forgetting about something that actually required much less time to cook. Even at that, it was still edible... if a bit dried out. The only thing you have to do while cooking is rotate the cooker to face the sun a couple of times a day.
As far as the food... well, I have a rather plain diet. I don't generally cook anything fancy, but I could easily. I actually have a couple of times. I'm actually using it right now--I have a potato in the oven. The outside temperature is about 37 degrees, and inside the oven, it's 240 degrees. I will leave the potato in there all day. Things do require longer to cook, so it's sort of like a slow cooker "crock pot" (which I also use) in that regard. The simple things I cook are generally potatoes (require at least 3 to 4 hours), rice (at least 2 to 3 hours), veggies like squash, etc (2 to 3 hours), meats such as barbecue, stew meat (I leave that all day), Beans (more on that in a minute), and some other odds and ends. I haven't tried bread or cakes yet, although I plan to.
Some of the peculiarities of a solar oven (some good and some not so good) are these:
***Food is almost always more moist (even after all day for some things) and tastes better. It seems to retain its flavor better than with the dry heat of the regular oven.
***Meat is generally more tender and tasty. I can get what would normally be crappy grade tough shoe-leather stew meat, it in the solar oven, and it comes out tender if left in the oven all day.
***With a couple of exceptions (mainly beans and rice), you don't cook in water. Using a lot of water (like in a stew) actually hampers the oven's ability to cook. So, if you make, say a stew, you chop all the ingredients up like usual, add the spices, etc, but you don't use any water (or very, very little if you do). The food cooks in its own juices and still comes out tender, moist, and tasty. The oven does not, under normal conditions, dry food out like a stove or oven can.
***Cooking rice is interesting. You use the normal ratio of water to rice. It takes far longer than usual (20 minutes for non-wild rice on a stove as opposed to several hours in the solar oven). The grains tend to elongate and "plump up" far more than rice cooked on the stove or in a dutch oven, for some reason. In fact, the first time I cooked rice in it, I opened the pot and nearly threw it away! I thought there were worms in it. Some of the grains seriously looked like worms they had expanded so much. I examined them closely and ... they still looked like cooked worms! I was kind of disgusted because I had already eaten a mouthful without paying too much attention. Only after I opened my five gallon bucket of rice and CAREFULLY went through some of it, did I convince myself that it was, indeed, just rice. So... I didn't get any extra protein after all. It's been that way ever since every time I've cooked it. And it's always nice and moist... except the one day I accidentally left it all day--but it was still edible, just a little "crunchier" than normal. Rice on the stove look scrawny and sickly now, in comparison.
***Beans are another story. Since beans require more water to cook, in my experience, they are a little hard (literally) to work with in the cooker. You'd better have a very long day or actually cook them for two days. The first time I cooked beans, I was eating half cooked beans that night. Optimally you leave them out all day... and then set them out again the next day. The water really slows it down. In the winter time, I'd doubt even two days would do it. Once they are cooked, though, they are great. The one thing you have to have when cooking in a solar oven is patience... but you REALLY have to have it when cooking beans.
***Cooking oatmeal from rolled oats and "steel-cut" oats is straightforward. Just multiply the time by 5 to 10. It comes out great though. Very tender, especially the steel-cut (chopped) oats that are annoying to cook on the stove, because they take so long and often end up being quite hard anyway. Several hours in the solar oven and they are great. Same applies to cooking whole wheat, spelt, millet, amaranth, quinoa, barley... but then, I'd assume most of you don't cook much of that, eh? I do. As I've mentioned before, I'm definitely more of a grains man... schkrrrrew yer oranges, bananas, carrot sticks, and brussell sprouts. And your bean sprouts too!
***Speaking of brussell sprouts and carrot sticks, yes, those sorts of things cook fine. And they retain more flavor than boiling them. Just remember... do not add water. Only add small amounts of water if you are cooking a recipe with spices or other dry ingredients... but still not as much as you normally would. Let the food cook in its own juices.
***You have to use all dark pots when cooking. You cannot put a regular pot in there. It will not heat up properly. Of course it comes with two large dark graniteware pots and I'm going to buy two smaller ones as well. You can also get breadpans and cookie sheets that are dark.
***Also, my cooker came with some pretty good recipes in a solar-oven specific cookbook and an instruction manual.
So, overall, I've had nearly overwhelmingly positive experiences with the solar oven. It saves work, money, and time (the actual time standing over a stove as opposed to the time you can ignore the solar oven while it's working). Only annoying experiences is the bean thing, and a day that starts out sunny, you put the cooker out, and when you get back home it's cloudy and raining on the cooker. Of course, even in that worst case scenario, you can always take the partially cooked food and finish it off in the range oven or stovetop.
One of the best things about this thing is, after the initial purchase (a little over $100), I've spent nothing on it, but I've saved quite a bit of money on the power bills. Plus, it fits right into my "simple living" ideal.
So there you have it. I like the thing so much, I'm planning on getting a parabolic reflector cooker that actually fries and cooks in regular pots in more of a traditional fashion--like working on a stove top. That would allow me to do any kind of cooking (on a sunny day) other than a dutch oven or browning oven sort of thing. But, all I have to do is build a fire for that.
Here is the most useful link I've found for solar cooking in general. These folks sell cookers, but they also offer so much great information, videos, testimonials, will answer your questions, show the different varieties of cookers and the uses, and are all-around just good folks. You can see a picture of a parabolic cooker and a "box cooker" on the main screen:
Thanks for posting this Chris. I had a Global Sun Oven and it worked really well when I lived in TX. Didn't work as well in Seattle (too much cloudy), and barely worked here in AK (ambient too cold most days even in sunny summer). The biggest problem with the GSO here in AK was that the box is only minimally insulated, so I built a thick insulated base box to put it in, and it works fairly well during our long sunny days in summer.
In TX, I could easily bake bread (up in the 400F range) in summer, but haven't had any success with bread and other baked goods anywhere north of Mason-Dixon.
I also have similar probs with rice and beans, mostly because they need water and water takes a long time to heat up. Soaking the beans overnight helps a bit; but really the best thing for hard beans and rice is to start them on the stove once your the sunoven warms up, bring them to a boil and then transfer them to the sunoven to finish cooking (pretty much the same as the wonderbox method).
I do a lot of stews and braising, and don't have the same water issues as Chris experiences. I think the difference may be that I preheat my sunoven with my cast iron Dutch oven inside all morning so both are already hot when I add the food to cook in the afternoon (rather than just putting everything out together "cold" in the morning). I don't find that the thin graniteware is really effective for anything except the quickest cooking veg and eggs.
One thing that sunoven is excellent for (esp. in the cloudy fall days) is as a solar dehydrator. Since the box usually doesn't get much warmer than 100-125 and it doesn't cook the food, but if you prop the lid up a little to vent moisture it really dehydrates food fast (I live arid, so this might not work in humid climates). My only issue has been remembering to check/shade the sunoven if the sun decides to peak out from behind the clouds for more than a half-hour while I'm dehydrating.
So, I'd say in hot sunny southern climates, the sunoven is AWESOME for nearly any type of cooking. But in cooler cloudier northern climates, the sunoven is just a great helper that lets you reduce other fuel-based cooking times.
Since our winters are very long, dark and cold I tend to use my wonderbox cooker more than my sunoven, and to use my sunoven more like a augmented wonderbox. In the spring and fall when we tend to have only two small fires a day in the woodstove, I can put today's dinner in the wonderbox in the morning, and tomorrow's breakfast in the wonderbox in the evenings. If it's a warm sunny summer day, I might be able to start preheating my sunoven and Dutch oven in the morning, add the food after lunch and have it ready by dinner.. but it gets too cold most nights (even though the sun is still up) to keep the sunoven warm enough to make tomorrow's breakfast unless the sunoven is just acting like a wonderbox overnight.
Earlier in the year, I purchased 2 Kelly kettles, then the Global Sun Oven and the EcoZoom Versa rocket stove. I almost went with the Grover rocket stove, which is another excellent choice. We all agreed that having just these 4 stoves would do everything we would need in the event that 'regular fuel' (e.g. propane, natgas, electricity, white gas) was not available. In another thread, I spoke of letting grandson #1 Ryan show me how to use the Kelly kettle, and we made instant oatmeal. The kid liked it so well, I got him the Scout model.
When the Global oven arrived, #2 grandson Matt and his sister Emily went to town on that one. DW made up some blueberry muffin mix, poured it into a muffin pan (just a regular one, not dark) and the kids forgot all about it after setting up the solar oven. Later that evening, DW remembered the muffins, and I went out and found them fully cooked, still warm, and we all enjoyed one with fresh butter. I have not used the oven since then, as we bought it for use up in Maine and very gradually we are moving stuff up there to store in containers over winter. My wife's brother is wintering over in the camper, and has winterized it as well as he can, so our gear should stay safe with him there.
I like the idea of the wonderbox for many reasons, as it is easy and takes very little "free" fuel to get a roaring boil going in the EcoZoom rocket stove (or even in the Kelly kettle), and this boiling water can get a lot of things started or even finished if placed into a super-insulated container. I think that we can and will cook rice that way. Instead of beans, we have opted for lentils, which take less water and less soaking, and cook up faster.
That was the reason I had started that thread, so long ago, of cooking without fuel (or at least, free fuel) but some people just got arguing over indoor stoves, and I realized I should have added the word "portable" to the title. But we all feel that this is a really good idea as a back-up, and maybe even a main-use option, although DW really likes her propane range, and she shall indeed have one as long as propane is available.
As for our Global Sun Oven, I am thinking more along the lines of using it as a slow-cooker, as we don't bake that much, but really do enjoy the moist, tender roasts and stews we get from our Crock Pot, and as long as boiling water is available to get something started early in the day, we look forward to using our solar oven to slow-cook all day long.
BTW my latest acquisition is a large fire-pit grating for steaks and ribs during the good weather. Add some campfire wood, and let it cook up nice and tender and hot, while adding all the BBQ sauce you like, plus corn on the cob, sausage, whatever. I'd definitely add something like this to any homestead, as it's so cheap, yet really expands your options.
I don't have one because we have so many ways to cook now, adding one of those would really be overkill.
But, you've got me thinking about constructing a small one for camping or emergency trips away from home if needed.
I once made a solar oven out of 2 cardboard boxes and aluminum foil to use on a camping trip. It worked! If you're handy, you can make a very inexpensive one out of something sturdier like wood.
I've had a number of alternative cooking methods but they've all been limited. This looks like it could do a good job on many things in many areas. I do wonder, however, about boiling beans for long periods. It would seem that both flavor and nutrients would be lost. When I lived at 8400' I discovered a different world. It's impossible to cook beans at that altitude except in a pressure cooker. But pressure cookers don't use a great amount of fuel as they're not on for very long. I'm only at 5500' now but still use mine frequently.
Kurt Saxon uses a thermos bottle to cook a sort of grain porridge, adding the grain and boiling water, then letting it brew. I haven't cooked grain but this does work with dried food without the long boiling time normally necessary.
I have two other problems. Hot weather generally only lasts four to six weeks; this year was an exception. Additionally, I'm in a very windy place, in fact one the windiest places in a generally windy area.
I don't believe that it would work for me although the parabolic reflector cooker might work.
Made two solar cookers.... (back when I was young and foolish, and now I am no longer young )
First was from a large fresnel lens (about 2 feet square I picked up at a surplus store)... Obviously had to de-focus it, as I didn't want to be able to melt metal.... aimed at a carbon-black painted aluminum box. Cooked (intentionally) slow, and made a great smoker for ribs. All the energy for it was free
Second solar cooker was derived from one of the old-style C-band satellite dishes (remember the ones about 10 feet in diameter?), that I got from a neighbor for $10. Had to sink a pier to hold it, but otherwise an easy set-up. (I digress, but I initially used it as a large-scale replica of the 'Big Ear" kit from the 70's.... could listen to sounds easily 1000 feet away..) Anyway, covered the surface with an extremely thin layer of gold-impregnated paint on top of aluminum sheets (the IR spectrum obviously was the goal), and with that much area (almost 80 ft^2), the signal gain was huge. (Never got to the solar auto-tracking device, which was needed, but was really simple using just two photodetectors). This cooker too had to be defocused, (and required frequent manual adjustments due to the rotation of the earth), but I wager it could cook enough at once for a major party
Oh well, enough rambling. Solar cooking works, and works well.
I've had a number of alternative cooking methods but they've all been limited. This looks like it could do a good job on many things in many areas. I do wonder, however, about boiling beans for long periods. It would seem that both flavor and nutrients would be lost. When I lived at 8400' I discovered a different world. It's impossible to cook beans at that altitude except in a pressure cooker. But pressure cookers don't use a great amount of fuel as they're not on for very long. I'm only at 5500' now but still use mine frequently.
Kurt Saxon uses a thermos bottle to cook a sort of grain porridge, adding the grain and boiling water, then letting it brew. I haven't cooked grain but this does work with dried food without the long boiling time normally necessary.
I have two other problems. Hot weather generally only lasts four to six weeks; this year was an exception. Additionally, I'm in a very windy place, in fact one the windiest places in a generally windy area.
I don't believe that it would work for me although the parabolic reflector cooker might work.
Just know it takes a LONG time to cook something in the solar oven. Start in the morning, ready in the afternoon. Have one for a few years and used it in Florida extensively...
Just know it takes a LONG time to cook something in the solar oven. Start in the morning, ready in the afternoon. Have one for a few years and used it in Florida extensively...
OD
My fear is that it would never be ready in this area since the wind would constantly cool the oven. I can't see any method to shelter it that wouldn't block the sun.
Mine seems to be pretty tolerant of wind (we do get quite a bit around here, but not as much as you). Right now, the low sun angle is making it more of a challenge, but the reflectors are helping a lot with that. I know the short winter days are going to make some things impossible very soon, though. I'll be using it though. When the time comes, I'll post about how things cook in the sub-freezing temps around here.
DW came up with an idea that we think will work. We intend to build a small solar greenhouse attached to the southern wall of our place in Maine. Without ventilation, those things can reach 100 degrees on a sunny winter day! So...why not just place the solar oven out in the greenhouse during the winter? Plenty of sun, no wind, and an extra layer of insulation. It stands to reason: why does a solar oven have to be outside in the elements all day, if you have even the smallest solar greenhouse to set it up in?
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