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.