SOLAR OVEN COOKING

It is not uncommon in emergency situations for the power to be out. With a solar oven, if the sun is shining, you can cook. Have backup sources of fuel, such as wood or propane, but in sunny climates your solar oven will be your main source of cooking. Solar cooking is clean, it keeps the heat out of your kitchen, it’s delicious and, best of all, it uses a free source of energy. You don’t want to waste precious food when times are bad, so you should practice cooking with your solar oven to know what you’re doing. The recipes have been included in this booklet to show the variety of foods that can be stored and how to cook them. Every recipe in this booklet was made in a solar oven.

With solar cooking, you can’t start dinner at 5:00, so you may want to do what our ancestors did; have breakfast in the morning, a big meal in the afternoon and a light snack before bed. If possible, have two solar ovens so you can be cooking dinner in one and baking breads or desserts in the other. Cooking times and temperatures are always approximate and will depend upon how your oven is placed, the time of day and cloud cover. A general rule is that foods will cook in about twice the usual amount of time. Don’t try to cook too much at one time. Larger amounts of food will cook faster if you divide it up and put it into smaller pots or cut foods into smaller pieces. Grains and beans need about ¼ less liquid because very little moisture escapes in solar cooking. There are other uses for your solar oven such as pasteurizing water, killing infestations in grains or dried foods, sanitizing dishes, drying firewood, sprouting foods, and decrystallizing honey or jams.

Some good safety rules are: germs can’t grow at 120 degrees, water is pasteurized at 150 degrees, foods will cook at 180 and water boils at 212 . Remember, no matter how you do your cooking, there is a danger zone for foods. Some foods left at temperatures between 50 and 120 for 3 or 4 hours can grow harmful bacteria and carry a risk of food poisoning.

Cookware: Measure the inside of your oven before buying any pots or pans. Using dark pots with tight fitting lids will absorb the heat and your cooking will go faster. In addition, your foods won’t have to be stirred as often. This is important because opening your oven drops the temperature by 50 to 100 in just seconds. Smoked glass cookware is good because you can see your food without opening the oven. Cast iron is great on partially cloudy days because it holds the heat. Cloudy days are good times to cook foods that just need a gentle simmer. The intermittent sun will provide enough heat to simmer soups and stews. Don’t use stainless steel or shiny aluminum pans which reflect the heat instead of holding it in. If all you have is aluminum, you can cover it with a dark cloth. Mason jars painted black work well. Put a strip of masking tape from the top of the jar down to the bottom and up the other side. Paint the jar and remove the tape. This allows you to see inside the jar while cooking. Using sunglasses will help you avoid the glare from the reflectors and always use pot holders.