Cooking with Sunlight: Learn How to Cook Food With Solar Cookers

(Page 4 of 4)

May/June 2003
By Jennifer Andes 
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Here’s the dish. Panel cookers usually hold only one pot, which can cook food for up to five or six people. Many box cookers, though, will hold several pots, allowing you to cook more than one dish at a time. The pots should preferably be thin metal to allow for the most efficient transfer of heat; they should also have a dark-colored, tight-fitting lid.

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Keeping it warm. Even after you finish cooking in your solar cooker, you can still keep it warm. In a box cooker, the heat is trapped inside and retained even after cooking is finished. A CooKit, in which the black pot is contained by a plastic bag, will not retain its heat for very long. You can, however, transfer the cooked dish into a Hay Box or Heat Retention Box that will keep the food warm. A Hay Box is a box insulated with hay, straw, wool, or feathers and will insulate for two to four hours, depending on how hot the dish was originally and how well the box is insulated. Kevin Porter at SCI also suggests adding rocks or a brick alongside the pots in a box cooker. This will keep the food warm even longer but will cause the cooker to heat more slowly.

On the menu. Curtis and Meyer advise newcomers to solar cooking to start with a panel or box cooker and prepare something simple such as rice, cereals, egg dishes, fish, poultry, fruits, and vegetables. Other easy-to-cook foods include cornbread, gingerbread, medium-size roasts, quick breads, yeast rolls, and buns. More advanced solar chefs may want to try cooking whole turkeys or large roasts. Dried beans are difficult to cook in a solar cooker unless they have been presoaked for at least eight hours.

Hot, hot, hot. Always use potholders when removing lids or pots from a solar cooker.

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