Sunday Solar Fiesta: Solar Ovens
Written by biscuit on July 13, 2008 – 9:10 am -Note: Stocking Up 101 will return next weekend. Blame the mowing!
I love my solar oven. I’ve had it since 2003 and have cooked countless meals in it. True, it’s a bit glitchy — I planned to use it today to to roast a nice buffalo chuck roast, but storms moved in last night and it’s too cloudy now. And it does require moving every few hours so that it catches the best rays.
Still, it does the trick, all the while saving on electricity and helping to keep the house cool on 95 degree days.
And, unless you’re insistent on technical sheets, it doesn’t require special recipes, at least not in my experience. I just put everything in it and go. True, as a result of my devil-may-care approach, there’ve been a few things I’ve been unable to replicate. For one, I was making a fantastic kind of upside down shepherd’s pie a few years ago, and danged if I can remember now how I did it.
But even my recipe memory lapses don’t stop me. My general approach is to just pile it in and go.
And food poisoning? Meh. I remember trying to have solar oven conversations on dKos and being besieged by Nervous Nellies horrified by the prospects of food poisoning! zomg, they would never, not in a million years, what am I thinking??
::pained sigh::
It boils down to this: if you know how to cook without landing yourself in the hospital with food poisoning, you know how to cook in a solar oven.
It’s why I only use mine on sunny days when I can be here to watch it. I simply put my ingredients into a covered Pyrex casserole dish, set the casserole into the solar cooker, aim the cooker at the sun and turn it however often is needed.
But, if you need further reassurance (which, if you’re reading this blog, you don’t need), this little article might help. Ultimately, though, it boils down to this: you don’t leave a nice roast in a crockpot overnight unless that crockpot is on. You don’t stew a chicken on the stovetop, then turn the flame off and leave it sitting ’til tomorrow. And you don’t cook a brisket in the solar oven, then let it sit for hours and hours when clouds move in, then evening approaches, then oops, it’s midnight, let’s see how that brisket turned out.
Common sense and knowledge of simple cooking techniques will ensure that botulism isn’t lurking around every corner, ready to chew you up and spit you out.
And, of course, you can make your own solar oven. I’m a bit of an engineering doofus, though, so I’ve never tried. If anyone has, though, your hints and guidance are most certainly appreciated!
Posted in Alternative Energy, Economy, Food, Frugality |
9 Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Biscuit,
Sensibility has gone out of human thinking. I think (;-)) we are the last to be sensible in cooking, farming, homesteading, sewing, ranching. I used a solar oven in Alaska in 1976 for goodness sake! It wasn’t hard, like you, move with the sun! DUH! Why don’t people get this? I’ll tell you, they are disengaged from what it is to be human and think. Today at church we did the hokey-pokey. Left hand in/out, right foot in/out, brain in/out, that one got me. If your brain is not engaged, then you don’t know what you are doing.
Also, here’s something I’ve posted before, but something I live by:
GENES
A human being should be able to
Change a diaper,
Plan an invasion,
Butcher a hog,
Design a building,
Write a sonnet,
Balance accounts,
Build a wall,
Set a bone,
Comfort the dying,
Take orders,
Give orders,
Cooperate,
Act alone,
Solve equations,
Analyze a new problem.
Pitch manure,
Program a computer,
Cook a tasty meal,
Fight efficiently,
Die gallantly……………………specialization is for insects.
- Lazarus Long/Miyamoto Musashi
I love that!
And you’re so right — people just want to be stars. The quality of life doesn’t seem to much matter.
Unfortunately, a good life requires good sense, and it is indeed lacking.
I’d love to hear some of the things you cooked in yours! Me, I cook mostly buffalo, chicken on occasion, vegetables, stews. Have never made a bread in it, although someday I might.
I have this lack of sun problem, the same one that keeps me from getting satellite internet — big mountain and many very old huge trees on south side of house. Nice for keeping cool, not so much for gardens and solar cooking.
We’re still in Suburbia in Denial enough that a solar cooker in the front yard would be seriously frowned upon. I do what I can now and plot for rebellious days later. After the zombies.
Real Life will begin after the zombies.
We ground our own wheat berries and made potato yeast (or sourdough) for bread and cooked a mean loaf. Actually cooked/baked salmon after the propane ran out. Uh, well, I cooked bear in it and got the name on the river of Cynnabear!!!
Wow - you were hardcore. WTG!!
Oh, ever had salmon cheeks?
Never, I don’t think. Seem to recall *something* about them, but what that is, I don’t know.
I take it they’re tasty!
It’s so funny. After using the salmon cheeks as a protein food in dishes on the river because they would have been just thrown away, now here in SW Washington we can buy salmon cheeks as a fish monger item. They are so good and sweet meat. The muscle that is behind the fin is really great, also. Can’t remember the name, but I don’t see them here.
Biscuit, you have inspired me to try a solar cooker here and see what I can produce! Got to get back to the land!
BTW, cooking over an open fire and making biscuits in a cast iron covered pot, bacon and eggs in a skillet is heaven!!!
Buffalo burgers are on the grill. Making red potato oven fries, cucumber salad and radish salad. Yum!