I am experimenting with use of the hot California summer sun to cook and to treat water. I am trying to create a solar cooker that deserves a spot in my BOB and one that merits inclusion in my car kit.

Some resources:

Using the sun for emergency preparedness
http://www.earthtoys.com/emagazine.php?issue_number=03.04.01&article=solarcooking

Solar cooking for campers
http://midtown.net/dragonwing/col9907.htm

Improvised solar cooker ideas:

http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/projects/solardogs.html

http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/pages/potatoes.htm

http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/funexperiments/agesubject/lessons/handouts/solarbake.html

Great idea - use the power that's available.

TRO

My favorite idea for a solar cooker that's easy to transport and set up is the "Sunbrella". Essentially it's an umbrella with a highly reflective underside that, when open, creates a parabolic reflector. It's light and it's compact when folded.

Unfortunately, the weak link in that idea so far is the reflective surface. Highly reflective surfaces tend to crinkle and in other ways become less reflective as they are continually folded and deployed.

Solar cooking is slow, does the solar cookers you are looking at get water hot enough to boil in a realistic timeframe, if at all?

I like playing with solar stuff, but I would think a wood fired water boiler would work better, be more reliable, work all times of the day or night, be easier to pack (less space) and without question get the water hot enough.


Solar is fun to play with, but when it hits the fan, I want my Thermette for water boiling.

BobS, I want your Thermette, too. I think it may be a great companion to a solar oven for the reasons you cite: when you are in a hurry, at night, and when there is little sun.

A thermette is pretty bulky, too. Folding solar could give it a run for its money.

Almost all solar ovens can at least pasturize water [?160 degrees?]; better ones - and that's my goal - can get well over 250 degrees.

Plus, unlike a Thermette, solar ovens can do their thing unattended for hours; do not require finding, igniting, or expending fuel - ever; and do not advertze your presence like a fire either while in use or after you have moved on; and can be built from found materials. They probably could make a mean signal mirror.

All of those virtues convince me solar is worth experimenting and investigating as another layer of redundancy and self-sufficiency.

I was not dissing solar fired cooking. I have little experience with it for cooking. We did it some years ago when I was in boy scouts. But from what I remember it was a very slow process. We used it for cakes and the like (no meat or bacteria critical things) and I remember the cakes were not always cooked well despite being in the sun a long time. Being growing boys, this did not stop us from eating it.


It’s hard to know when water reaches 160 degs when out in the wild, boiling on the other hand is very easy to see.

I have all the material for a small (2 ft by 4 ft) solar water heater that I plan on building this summer to play with. But I don’t plan on cooking with it, just heating shower and clean-up water while camping.


If you are interested, here are a few solar cooking sites I have bookmarked with lots of ideas & plans.

http://solarcooking.org/default.htm

http://www.cookwiththesun.com/solar.htm

http://www.knowledgehound.com/topics/solarcoo.htm

Solar has potential to emerge as a major water purification technology and the industry has developed a reusable indicator that turns color when pasteurization temperature is reached. It is described in this article, among other things:

http://solarcooking.org/sunandwater.htm

Also in solar cooking’s favor over a Thermette: little danger of starting a fire; no fire permits to get or pay for, use almost anywhere – even where fire would not be permitted or welcome; no embers to extinguish or worry about failing to extinguish; and baking capability. Like most new ovens, you have to learn how long to do what for best results.

“Solar baking tip: A conventional oven cooks from the bottom up. A sun oven cooks from the top down. To make sure that your bread, muffins, or pizza isn't too moist on the bottom, preheat a heat sink in your solar cooker, for an hour or so, before you plan to bake. A heat sink is a brick, a tile, or a flat rock that is painted black. The heat sink gets hot in the cooker so you have a hot surface to later place your baking.” http://www.solarhaven.org/SolarCooking2.htm

Thanks for the recipe sites.

Here’s an interesting site on solar food dehydrating:

http://www.geopathfinder.com/9473.html

Solar cooking can be very efficient. I saw one once which used an array of mirrors focused at the bottom of a cast iron frying pan. Could over fry an egg to a crispy state in under 60 seconds.

It was by no means portable however...about the size of a big bath tub for lack of something better to compare it to.

There is a range of "portable" solar cookers ranging from fold-up to suitcase models:

http://65.108.108.197/catalog/solarcookerskits-c-1.html?osCsid=175170b8962102b1cfd38c77657d5c59

Here's a compact solar water purification unit:

Aquapak water purification system with built-in WAPI $20
http://65.108.108.197/catalog/aquapak-p-37.html?osCsid=175170b8962102b1cfd38c77657d5c59

If your bug out or other travel is at night, and you are going to hole up during the day to sleep, eat, and minimize detection, then a solar cooker might be a good fit. If your day will be spent hunting, fishing, and foraging away from a base camp or survival retreat, then a solar cooker makes good sense. Edit: except in bear country I guess you might want to use unattended solar for purifying water only.

I don't think I'd use solar for purifying water. I'm sure all your weather varies but here the sun can't be counted on for something like that.

I guess it could do as an alternative to making a fire but having to carry it but not always being able to use it would make it a liability to me weight wise.

Yep, by definition solar depends on sun, though ambient air temperature apparently has little effect. This means solar effectiveness varies by season and climate. You wouldn't want solar in a winter BOB in a cloudy climate, but if that climate has a sunny summer ....

But I know I already change gear, like my sleeping system, in my BOB and car kit for winter even here in California. Ditto for the rest my camping and hiking gear. A great piece of gear with seasonal limitations is nothing new.

“Clear weather is essential. On partially cloudy days, solar cooking takes longer. On extremely cloudy days, we suggest that you rely on the old energy-consumer standbys like house ovens or barbecues.

Outside temperature has little effect on solar cooking; if the sky is clear, you can cook on a snowbank high in the mountains.”

http://www.azsolarcenter.com/technology/solcook-5.html

Fast and light! Fast and light!

Jeez Louise! Does anyone even really consider anything else?

If you really want instant cooking on a camping trip or a survival situation, all you have to take with you is a generator and a microwave.

As you might have noticed, this topic is in the Long-Term forum. Let's see how long the wood supply lasts, esp if there are others around. Just how much petroleum-based fuel do you intend to store? Carry?

Sue (yes, as a matter of fact, I AM in a bad mood. How could you tell?)

While a solar water heater can be unattended for hours, it does in fact take hours to boil the same amount of water a Thermette or Kelly Kettle can do in 5-min or less. Also you should re-aim the solar cooker throughout the day to keep it pointed at the sun so it’s not the set it up and forget it thing you make it out to be. The setup time for both would be about the same I would imagine. The Thermette fills with water in just a few seconds, but it does take a min to get the fire going. But 5-min from starting the fire I will have boiling water, this process is repeatable even faster for any additional water boiling as the fire is already started.


As far as building a solar cooker from materials found, I would say it’s a lot easier to find a few sticks then the material to make a solar water heater.


And 2 or 3 min of picking up sticks will give me enough free fuel to boil several gallons of water. I can also cook with the Thermette (as can those that have a Kelly Kettle) while boiling the water. It gives me a lot of choices in how to do the job in a very short time.


Yes people may be able to see the smoke from the Thermette or Kelly Kettle, but it produces less smoke then you may think. And as far as the remains being found. Is this really an issue? If so I would use my alcohol stove or Svea stove, or dig a small area to use the Thermette in and when done spread the ashes around and cover the spot over with the removed dirt. I have done this with small camping / cooking fires in the past and you are hard pressed to see that a fire was made there.

If trying to remain stealthy I would suggest that a 5-min fire is no more going to be seen then spending all day in a spot waiting for a solar water to boil water. But again I don’t see this as an issue at all.


And if there is a fire ban on in the area I’m camping in, the Thermette works on top of any camp stove. It works slower this way, not as fast as with a wood fire. But it’s still much faster then a solar water cooker.


I’m not trying to take apart the idea of using solar as a way to cook and make drinkable water. I’m just pointing out how the Thermette & Kelly kettles work and can be used, and continuing the debate to help all of us get the most information we can to be ready for any given unknown situation.

Good post, BobS.

I have no knock on the Thermette. I expect I will eventually own and use one; especially for car and canoe camping.

Cooking solar takes some practice. Mid-day is usually best. Better portable solar setups can reach in excess of 250 degrees in about 30 minutes of full sun, regardless of ambient air temperature. Time to pasteurize or boil is going to depend on altitude but, except for massive parabolic cookers, solar will never be as fast as a Thermette.

There are some foods, especially baked goods, that can be cooked in less than an hour, depending on conditions.

You can cook soups, stews, casseroles, and other dense foods unattended for substantial periods of time with solar. There is no need to keep adjusting the cooker to track the sun, but you can if you want.

With the efficiency of modern solar a typical cycle begins with pointing the solar cooker so that it will get best sun from 11 to 2. Earlier than that it is warming, during peak it is cooking, and after peak it is keeping food warm. Solar cookers are like other slow cookers, you really cannot burn food very easily. So “set it and forget it” as Ron Popeil (sp?) would say; go fishing or take a nap.

I agree that, except in the most desperate of escape and evasion bug outs, the smoke and residues of a small fire are not a big issue. But I think many of us know that even burying, or spreading and covering, evidence of a fire leaves at least telltale smell, as does the downwind smoke plume long before and long after you can see actual smoke. So if being found or tracked, or just minimizing your impact on the land is an issue, then solar might be a better option.

In many places picking up a few handfuls of fuel will not be a problem, though in all California parks and many local and national parks it is technically illegal. Much of the time you probably also are supposed to get a fire permit, and at times the permits will not be issued due to fire danger. I agree that the no-harm-no-foul rule will probably apply most of the time, but solar eliminates these legal concerns. This may be a consideration for you, perhaps especially if you are trying to model behavior you want youngsters to follow.

The stealth scenario presumed you were already holing up for the day and traveling at night only. Again, I agree it is only relevant in extreme evasion situations and it is up to you if you want to think about preparedness for such cases. My current BOB plan includes an alcohol stove. In fairness, if aerial pursuit was an issue, I would not want to deploy a large reflective solar cooker either.

Making a solar cooker from found materials is definitely harder than assembling found fuel for a Thermette you are already carrying and could be impossible in some situations. But of course that is an apples and oranges comparison. If solar makes sense you can put together a game plan for making a solar cooker more easily than making a Thermette.

By the way, if you are traveling you can sometimes set up a solar cooker to cook as you go. In a canoe or on top of a vehicle, would be examples.

Is solar perfect for all applications, all the time, everywhere? Nope. But is a Thermette, or an alcohol stove, or a pressurized gas stove?

I’d be interested in seeing pictures of the solar cooker you make. If you make one, take pictures and post them and the results.

Will do.

This weekend I am testing a couple of cardboard box solar cookers. I intend to cook a stewed chicken in one and chili in the other. I will report.

I am having technical difficulties with photos. I take them and can upload them to my computer, but my PhotoBucket account no longer recognizes me. Email to the company has not been answered yet.

Wood supply will last forever, a Thermette or Kelly Kettle takes a surprisingly little amount of wood. And wood is a renewable resource. In my yard more of it falls to the ground then I could use in the Thermette. In a disaster situation construction debris is abound everyplace. In almost everyplace on the planet you will not have a problem finding burnable fuel.

Counting my trees and the neighbors tree that drop things in my yard there are 5-trees.

In almost everyplace you will have more trees then that to harvest firewood from.


I went to a music festival a few weeks ago with 50,000 people in attendance. (With all those people, a lot of them grabbing all the wood they could find. As it’s against the law in Ohio to transport firewood, it has to be bought locally or scavenged on site)I was able to have an abundance of wood to use, in fact even using the Thermette to heat enough water for 3-people to take showers and wash dishes once a day I still had a small pile of wood left over at the end of the week.


I would like to see a good solar cooker / water heater in use, but I don’t think in a survival situation it comes close to burnable fuels for generating heat. That’s why I went the way I did, it works well.

"I don’t think in a survival situation it comes close to burnable fuels for generating heat."

Large array solar can generate temperatures into the thousand of degrees Farenheit [ see for example http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/renewable/solar_plants.html#Parabolic%20Troughs], though typical small cooker designs get into the 250 - 450 degree Farenheit range by design [ see for example . http://home.att.net/~cleardomesolar/parabolic.html].

Improvised solar can be as simple as a board, a tire, a black pot , and a pane of glass:
http://www.solarcooking.org/plans/tire_eng.htm
Making a solar still and cooker from improvised materials should be on the list of survival skills. Check out this parabolic solar cooker basket made of found materials, including in part of of blackberry branches and tin can lids!
http://www.appropedia.org/Parabolic_Basket_Solar_Cooker

“The next time we tested the cooker, we used a quart-sized jar that was painted black and created dead air space by placing a transparent pickle jar over it. That day, we set up the jar at 11:20 am on a warm sunny day without wind. After an hour, the water inside the jar was starting to bubble, meaning that we surpassed pasteurization temperature. After about two and a half hours the water in the quart jar was at a rolling boil.”

Like all survival gear, solar needs to fit the situation. For your fixed site survival retreat or large bug out vehicle, a large solar device is possible and smaller types easily incorporated. For man-portable solo survival situations, you are probably looking at a small, folding system which will cook and pasteurize water, but may not boil water except in near ideal solar conditions.

BobS and I have explored some of the virtues and vices of solar versus Thermette in earlier parts of this thread. I think going with a Thermette makes sense much of the time; I intend to buy one in the future. I think going solar has tremendous potential and am exploring its use now; many others around the world have been using solar on expeditions for more than a century.

My main point: consider taking a hard new look at solar.

That tin can lid cooker was interesting. But the math! I hate math!!!

So don't calculate, OBG. Use something alreday parabolic like the inside-of-an-umbrella projects. I bet as a practical matter you can figure out where curved relector panels focus their light / heat against a target like a piece of cardboard just like you zero in with a magnifying lens.

Or do as I am: start with a cardboard box project instead of one that is parabola-based. My thought is to then duplicate the box with thin aluminum sheets lined with foil at first, then with super reflective material like:

http://home.att.net/~cleardomesolar/solareflexpanels.html

In the winter there is less than 8 hours between sunrise and sunset here.

I admit it's interesting and I think that it's a concept to be aware of but I would never rely on it for anything.

Hacksaw, I don't know where the cutoff is for practical solar, but no question if there is little sun there is little solar energy to harvest. Just as when there is little or nothing flammable around, relying on a found fuel technology makes no sense. Each has its appropriate place and its limits.

Where I live we have in excess of 200 days of sun, and I wouldn't rely on solar in the rain and fog of winter either. But even in winter here we have more than a few glorious days of bright blue skies and full sun between storm fronts, we call them bluebird days, that offer a solar opportunity.

The travel literature indicates summers are pretty nice up your way. If your closed vehicle is pointed south and it is hot inside when you come back after a few hours, you probably have useful solar. When the sun is melting ice and snow, you probably have useful solar. If agriculture has a growing season in your area, you probably have useful solar.

Survival choices should probably focus on what works. I would never suggest trying to use solar when it doesn't work. But when it does work, why take the solar option off the table?

You do have a point. While winter days are short, summer days are long (it didn't get completely dark until after 11pm today).

If there were a solution portable enough, I'd consider it. I'm the first to beat the redundancy horse to death. But the older I get the more finicky I get about carrying/packing stuff which isn't vital. Maybe that's because of the extra weight I'm carrying under my belt.

This thread got me to thinking about making my own portable rig...just to see for myself what it can do.

Here's what I'm going to do as a prototype since it won't cost me anything but some of my time...and that's not worth much

I'm going to make a folding backdrop out of cardboard which is small enough to fit into my Crusader canteen bag. Likely 6 to 8 sections overall so I can cover 180 degrees and underneath.

Then I'm going to coat the cardboard with sections of a space blanket attached with spray contact adhesive.

My Crusader cooking cup is black already and has a lid. I should be able to put water in it, put the whole thing in a big zip top bag and go...as long as there is sun.

If it works I'll make another one with really thin plastic sheets hinged with tape and stuck into the bag for a (non)rainy day. I doubt that would add more than a few ounces.

If I'm missing anything speak now before I get out my scissors!

Go for 360 degrees with the front lower than the back. If you can make the sections so the top is wider than the bottom so the reflector spreads out like a flower, that can help. Use an oven bag, not just a ziplock.

Set it up and ignore it for hours, unless you see something strange developing. Once you open a small solar set up's thermal isolator / bag it takes a long time to get back up to temperature.

Have fun and give us a report!

Edit: I put a 4.47 pound roasting chicken and some veggies out to cook in my cardboard box solar cooker at 10 am today. It is 11:45 and the pot is too hot to touch for more than a second and I can see the chicken browning where the lid is lifted about ½ inch because I overloaded the pot.

How thick is the chicken and how well did the chicken cook inside?

Chicken #1 test result: Qualified failure.

Air temperature away from the focus of the oven was 130 degrees at 3:45.

The chicken breasts were a little over 2.5 inches thick. The skin browned well only at the very top, the breast and whole carrot stuffed in breast temp after 15 minutes of resting was 140 degrees, and the breast meat pulled apart easily. Juices were present and near the breast bone may have showed the palest of pink (I had to look a couple times and was not quite sure). Drumstick meat measured only 130 degrees, pulled apart easily, and the juices again might have been the slightest bit pink (I was a little more certain I saw some pink).

Unfortunately, solar ovens cook from the top down. The fact the breasts were probably cooked and the drumsticks probably not quite cooked, meant the rest of the bird was not done. The whole carrot stuffed in the breast was not quite cooked soft all the way through.

I lifted the bird out and placed it on a carving board to check underneath. Red and pink juices ran onto the board. None of the potatoes, onions, or turnips that lined the bottom of the pot were done. I did not start with any liquid in the pot (there was no room to put in the canned tomatos), but there was about an inch of juice in the bottom of the pot.

Being a confirmed coward, I reloaded the pot and put it in a 325 degree oven to finish cooking. All knives, boards, utensils, and my hands washed in hot soapy water.

Thoughts for next time: Bird too big (the recipes I found all recommended a 2.5 pound bird but I got the smallest one I could find at the store.). Overloaded pot couldn’t close (all recipes for all solar cooking indicate a closed pot).

Chili #1 test: Put an almost full pot on to see if a vegetable chili could cook starting at 3:45. We’ll see if there is enough solar to do the job. This is a second clean pot, not the one used for the chicken #1 test.

Sigh. Solar advocate face slightly red.

If you guys can post some pictures too, please do.I can't wait to see some of the reports on this stuff!

I think a way to cook the chicken in a solar oven would be the way I cook it when I’m making barbecued chicken on my grill.


I boil the chicken in water for 45-min to an hour (after the water boils it's 45-min). Then when on the grill all I have to do is brown it and brush on the barbecue sauce. If you did something like this with the solar it probably would be easier to make sure the chicken is done inside.

Use the solar to boil the water the chicken is sitting in. then brown it after that.

I wouldn't stuff the chicken...you are going to need to cook it all the way through if you do and it's going to require more cooking. Some chefs actually don't recommend stuffing birds anyhow because the stuffing (be it veggies or stuffing or whatever) can get contaminated by touching the raw chicken on the inside. Then if you can't get the stuffing up to a certain temp to kill the potential nasties, it might not be safe to eat. And if you do get it up to temp on the inside, the outside of the bird is WAY over done.

If you could put something inside the chicken which would help cook it from the inside, you'd be laughing. Maybe a case for beer can chicken?

I didn’t realize you tried to cook a whole bird with it till I re-read your post. I would stay away from trying to do this with a whole chicken. But if you just do chicken breast I would do the boiling and then browning method.


You never learn what something can or can’t do, or what you have to change to make it work till you experiment like you did.

Thanks, guys.

Yeah, I was a bit stubborn in trying to cram that big a bird and all the rest into the pot. [The carrot became stuffing because there was nowhere else for it to go.] Maybe second time will be the charm.

The chili came out awsome, though I did have to relocate the solar cooker to avoid the shade of a neighbor's tree. I think smaller pieces of food and the closed lid made a big difference.

The chicken came out of the oven and with a side of chili, well, I don't really count anything after seconds!

"...the boiling and then browning method..."

You can probably skip the browing part, that is just for looks anyway. Chicken tastes pretty much like chicken, no matter how brown it is...

An easy, quick and no mess way to brown something is to blowtorch it. I love bratwurst, it just doesn’t look right not browned. I buy the pre-cooked kind. I put them in a zip-lock bag with some water in it and drop them in a pan of hot water for a few min and then pull them out and hold them with tongs and run the blowtorch over them. No mess, they look right, taste right and it makes no mess to speak of. The pan only has to have the water dumped out, I use that water to clean the tongs off. It also works for hotdogs, I’m sure it will work for other meat.

I'm working on my solar blow torch now.

Camping out on the east side of Folsom reservoir. Deployed solar oven at 11 a.m, more than an hour late, due to getting caught up in a tracking session.

Pushed things again by going double-decker: chicken in pieces and a few veggies on top of a chili / Spanish rice / corn mixture. But this time I made sure the lid shut firmly.

Pots very hot to the touch in about 15 minutes. I moved the oven a couple times to better track the sun.

The plan was to let everything cook until at least 5 pm; sunset was near 8 pm. For a complex of reasons I packed up my gear starting about 3 pm instead of staying the night. I intended to remain in camp until the evening campfire began which would have been about 6 to 7 pm.

Best laid plans and all that. Seeing that I was packing, the troops got restless. Food was pulled from the solar oven just before 4 pm.

Top pot: chicken juicy and wonderful, accompanying vegetables too al dente. Chicken disappeared into hungry campers.

Bottom pot: everything great except slightly under cooked vermicelli strips that were part of the Spanish rice mixture. Much of the contents of this pots happily eaten by campers.

Perceived lessons:

Solar can work well but you need to get to know the oven well.

If not started early, this solar oven should "cook" as long as there is substantial sun in the sky.

May have been inadequate moisture to rehydrate the vermicelli.

Smaller pieces of vegetable seems to cook better.

Hungry campers will eat even stuff they have not seen before.

Given the perfomance of this carboard fold-up solar oven, a more efficient box oven that gets at least 75 degrees warmer [into the mid-200 degree range] is sounding pretty good.

Why not start out with simple meals, and things that won’t harm you (with bacteria) if you don’t have it fully cooked right? Move on to more complex things once you get the basics down and get refinements worked out.

Your suggestion / question has surface appeal and paying attention to cleanliness is always a good idea. But:


I want to practice cooking food I want to eat.

I do not know what progession of "simpler" foods would lead to cooking the food I want to eat. Maybe there is a scientific approach to cooking stuff leading up to, for example, cooking chicken, but I do not know what that would be.

It is easy for me to see and test whether chicken is cooked properly: flesh "bounce" to touch, whether meat "falls of the bone", presence or absence of red in juices, flex of joint tendons, how rendered the fat and skin, and color of the red meat all come to mind as some of the ways I test chicken in a few seconds. I have learned and applied these tests for many decades every time have I eaten or cooked chicken. When in doubt about the chicken or anything in contact with it, cook it more or discard it. At home I have an instant thermometer to confirm that the other tests accurately indicate the chicken has reached temperature ranges suggested in the cook books.

It is also easy for me to determine if potato, carrot, onion, garlic, and celery are cooked properly. Use of these vegetables, cut in different thicknesses. is a diagnostic for how the solar oven is cooking. I need to learn to time the cooking from these foods.

Whether rice or noodles properly cook is also diagnostic of the amount of moisture that should be added (it seems to be less than in conventional stove top cooking) and how long it should be solar cooked.

All of that said, I have moved from cooking a whole chicken over vegetables, to cooking chicken parts over vegetables, and may try cooking just the chicken parts next time.

The sort of chili stews I have cooked both included rice as a diagnostic ingredient that was tested by pulling out a few grains. The first time the rice was great; the second time the rice was good but the small amount of vermicelli noodles in the Spanish rice mix were not quite done. The small amount of the second batch I reserved and put on ice to take home was excellent after adding some water and cooking in a covered pot at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes. Again I think the second batch needed more water for the noodles.

So, I think I just need to keep after it.

Before NASA sent a man to the moon, they did a lot of other testing, what fuel to use, how much fuel to use, how to make airtight doors and a million other things. It seems you want to build a rocket to take you to the moon without testing your rocket first.

+1 on that Bob.

It's always best to start small. You may eventually get it right but you're much more likely to get it right if you start small and learn what works and what doesn't.

And even if you did get it right, would you know why? I used to be a programmer and would preach the benefits of changing code one snippet at a time only, then testing, then changing something else, then testing. My bosses used to get on my case about the waste of time. But if you change more than one thing at a time, you don't know what change fixed or broke your code.

Jumping to the final product can be the same way with cooking. You learn a lot of valuable lessons when you start small and build your way up. I like to think I'm half decent in the kitchen but I wouldn't be half as good if I hadn't experimented with stuff, made some mistakes, and learned lessons about what works and what doesn't.

To me it's like giving somebody who's never seen a microwave before a microwave and a turkey and asking them to make a perfect Thanksgiving feast. There's no way they'd know how to do it or know if it were even possible. And even if they got it right, they'd go through a lot of Turkeys learning stuff we take for granted because we've used microwaves on little stuff for years and take it for granted.

I think you guys need a visit from the exaggeration police. I appreciate your comments, though, as they make me think through what I have learned from my solar cooking so far.

My “rocket” is just a solar oven. It’s an oven. I don’t know about you but I have used ovens for decades. Some ovens cook hot, all have colder and hotter spots, and you have to learn by cooking food on different levels, front and back, etc. (One of my favorite ways is to place small pot pies all over the racks and let ‘er rip.) It is a trial and error process, which is just what I am doing.

Figuring out how to cook chicken in this new oven is in no way equivalent to going to the moon. The destination and every step to get there are well-known and practiced. The primary variable is how long to let things cook in the new oven, which is exactly what I am testing.

Microwave turkey? Geez! A solar oven cooks like an oven, a familiar technology, not like a microwave. Not only have many people cooked chicken in solar ovens (many, many online recipes for example) but in both of my tests I have successfully cooked chicken. In the first test only the top half of the chicken and in the second all the chicken parts.

So what has gone “wrong”? Nothing a little more cooking time or a little more water in the pot couldn’t fix. In fact that is exactly what I did to finish the dishes in both tests: put the incompletely uncooked food in a conventional oven and finished cooking them. All the food was then good and eaten.

Why couldn’t I finish everything to perfection in the solar oven? It is in the nature of a solar oven. You have to guesstimate the cooking time. Once you open the heat envelope around the pot(s) and the pot(s) to check the food you cannot quickly bring the oven back up to temperature. And in my tests the envelope and pot(s) were opened later in the day with much less sun available so I judged it impossible to resume solar cooking (I may be wrong about that but those experiments are for another day).

So what am I going to do? Cook exactly the same dishes again. Give the chicken parts and vegetables more cooking time for the vegetables (the chicken cooked fine) and give the chili-rice-etc. dish more water for the noodles (they were all that were undercooked).

Sounds like you know what you are doing to me. And know what undercooked chicken looks/feels like. Go for it...

The one clear result so far is that this particular solar oven is at the low end of efficiency. Even as a slow cooker it takes too long to develop sufficient heat to cook the full meals for 5-6 people its large pots invite in a reasonable time. But then again it is a very inexpensive folding cardboard contraption with just some shiny silvery-aluminum-looking coating and an oven-type bag.

My oven and instant thermometers suggest this little guy with fairly full pots of food creates temperatures between 175 and 225 degrees. In the world of solar cooking that is very low powered. That's why it behaves as a slow cooker.

As I posted earlier, what I wanted to find out is whether solar cooking was for real. Even this relatively low powered oven has shown me solar cooking is suprisingly effective.

I remain in the hunt for a relatively compact, lightweight, but much more efficient solar cooker. The literature suggests / promises that with better temperature insulation of the cooking pots and more efficient reflectors to better concentrate the sun's rays, a solar oven exposed to full mid-day sun should achieve cooking temperatures in the 250 to 400 degree range within one to two hours. I am planning to attend a "SolFest" in August in Northern California to try to track down one of these high powered solar ovens.

I have not yet seen a design that I would consider worthy of inclusion in a BOB or for normal backpacking, though I am hopeful I can find or make something that makes sense for these situations. What I have seen are solar ovens that promise excellent performance for car camping and home use.

I continuue to play.

As far as efficiency goes, your at about 100% simply based on the use of "free" energy and very little energy expended on your part to set up and adjust. Can't get much better than that. I have not had a chance to play with it yet, but will get the cardboard and foil out one of these days and try. I do applaud your efforts though.

I agree, that as a long term survival instrument, a solar cooker is worth it as it can be used (within reason) without much tending freeing up resources (human and natural) for other things.

Bill

Here are links to some commercial solar cookers. I found a sticker on the cooker I am using that identifies it as a "CooKit". I have no affiliation, etc.

Solar Cooker’s International CooKit $25
http://65.108.108.197/catalog/solarcookerskits-c-1.html?osCsid=c11beee230214e15b751ae00e5e55966

http://www.safetycentral.com/cookersheaters.html

Surfer Chef Solar Cooking System $30
http://www.surferchef.com/

Hot Pot Solar Cooker $100
http://www.gaiam.com/product/solar-livin...solar+cooker.do

Sport Solar Oven $168
http://www.solarovens.org/sossport.html

Clear Dome Solar Octagon Parabolic Solar cooker $250
http://home.att.net/~cleardomesolar/parabolic.html

Tulsi Hybrid $265
http://eartheasy.com/solar_oven.htm

Global Sun Oven Solar Cooker $300
http://www.safetycentral.com/globalsunoven.html

Please continue! I've considered solar ovens but wanted to know a little more about their practical use before making a large expenditure on a quality oven. Have been reading your posts with great interest.

Excellent posts dweste, very interesting and informative. I really appreciate all the links and the idea of using solar water pasteurization for long term emergency situations is brilliant.

I had the thought that if your solar oven is not bringing your pot and contents up to high enough temperatures quickly enough, perhaps increasing the size of the reflecting surfaces would help?

The CooKit design is what I was going to copy to make a mini one for my Crusader. Given the results you had with the full sized one, I'm pretty sure a smaller model would be insufficient.

I'm pushing the CooKit pretty hard with large volumes and large pieces of food to see what happens. If I was cooking just for myself with a small voume and small pieces of food I am pretty sure it would do fine. I will be experimenting to see if this theory proves out and I will report.

I also think that if all I was doing was heating water in the volumes to rehydrate freeze-dried and dehydrated camp meals for one, then the CooKit would also perfom well. Again, I will be experimenting to see if this theory proves out and I will report.

It would be great if someone made a mini-CooKit and tested it, especially if it incorporated a better reflective material and something less bulky than cardboard. Hint, hint ....

I just read about using your vehicle dashboard to solar cook cookies.

http://bakingbites.com/2007/09/car-baked-chocolate-chip-cookies-step-by-step/

Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

Well if you're going to be using a car you might as well fire it up and set a Car-B-Q on the engine. LOL

To help with the cooking time and to get them more evenly done have you thought about boning them then smashing them to a nice uniform thickness?

Pounded chicken steaks? Why not. Good idea. That will be part of an upcoming test and report.

I don't know how well it would work in the solar oven but when I do it I usually sprinkle them with brown sugar and garlic. A sort of hillbilly teriyaki.

August 2d there will be celebrations of "Northern Hemisphere Solar Cooking Day." If you are interested in solar cooking watch your local media for events in your area.

What a difference clear sky makes!

Under the clear bright Sacramento, California sky beef stew put in at about noon was cooking at 275 degrees by about 1 in the same Cookit that struggled to make maybe 170 degrees under the smoky skies of Folsom Reservoir just a couple of weeks earlier. Even copycat solar cookers cut out that day from cardboard and lined with glued-on freezer foil got up to 250 degrees.

In additon to the stew we enjoyed herb bread, cornbread muffins, wild rice, and raisin-apple crumble.

I love solar cooking. It still amazes me and I feel like somehow we're getting away with some kind of cheating!

If you wanted to boost the heat (with an out of the box idea) and you have a 12-volt solar panel with a few watts behind it. You could use it to light up a few auto light bulbs (1156 backup bulbs would work) placed inside the oven to help generate heat.

This is only worth doing if you have the panels and are not using them for anything else at the same time.