A Simple Box Solar Cooker
The Benefits of Solar Oven Cooking
Solar cooking is the simplest, safest, most convenient way to cook food without consuming fuels or heating up the kitchen.
Many people choose to solar cook for these reasons. But for hundreds of millions of people around the world who cook over fires fueled by wood or dung, and who walk for miles to collect wood or spend much of their meager incomes on fuel, solar cooking is more than a choice – it is a blessing.
How Do Solar Ovens Work?
There are a few different styles of solar ovens to choose from, but all function on the same basic principle by converting sunlight (solar energy) into heat.
There are panel cookers, made up of reflective panels that surround the cooking pot. Generally, the pot is placed in a plastic cooking bag that helps to trap the heat.
Parabolic concentrators or curved cookers that cook at high temperatures by concentrating and focusing reflected light onto the pot. Because curved concentrators cook at high temperatures, they need careful adjusting and constant supervision.
Box cookers consist of an insulated box, a glass door and a reflective panel. Food is cooked inside the box where the heat is trapped.
There are many different variations of these three main types of solar cookers. You can find solar oven plans and build one yourself, purchase a solar oven ready to use, or even invent your own. All solar ovens benefit from the use of a dark cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid.
Benefits to Households using Solar Oven Cookers
At moderate solar cooking temperatures food doesn’t need to be stirred and won’t burn – food can simply be placed in a solar cooker and left to cook, unattended, for several hours while other activities are pursued.
In the right circumstances it is possible to put a solar cooker out in the morning and return home in the late afternoon to a hot meal ready to eat. Pots used for solar cooking are typically easy to clean.
Many solar cooker designs are portable, allowing for solar cooking at work sites or while pursuing outdoor activities like picnics or camping.
So whether you build a solar cooker yourself or purchase a solar oven that is already to use you will enjoy the benefits of clean non-polluting cooking with direct solar energy from the sun.
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| Global Sun Oven – Solar Cooker |
Hybrid Solar Oven |
Do you use a Solar Cooker?
Share your experience with others and help spread the word about natural sun powered solar cooking by leaving a comment below.
Thanks,
-Red
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I don’t yet use a solar cooker but I plan to soon. I am surprised this has not caught on at least for outdoor enthusiasts more than it has.
Hi Justin,
We have played around over the years with using the suns energy to heat and cook a little but have gotten much more interested in using the free thermal energy from the sun in the past few years.
We do a good bit of camping with the scouts so that is going to be one of our projects in the near future, building a portable solar cooker that is rugged enough to withstand a few years camping with our scouts.
When I showed my 11 and 12 year olds the plans for the simple cardboard box solar oven they both got very excited and wanted to build one right on the spot but we had to postpone that for a future weekend project because we have so many other things going on with them at the moment.
We plan to do a number of simple and inexpensive projects to demonstrate how anyone can benefit from the free thermal energy available from the sun.
-Red