Tag Archives: cooking

Solar Cooking, Part 1

I love the idea of solar cooking! Why waste natural resources and money when the sun is capable of cooking our food?

Ages ago when I was deployed to Saudi Arabia as a member of the Air Force, we were issued meals ready to eat (MREs) for a couple of weeks for our lunch. It was summertime in the Arabian Desert, so daytime temperatures were typically around 130 degrees. We would take the little pouches that contained the main dish, place them on rocks in the sunshine for 10 minutes, and they would get hot enough for steam to come from the pouch when they were opened. That experience really made me want to use solar power to cook food ever since.

Last year I purchased two kinds of solar cookers, but I’ve been so busy with school that I hadn’t really gotten a chance to experiment with them. This week I decided to give the Haines 2.0 Solar Cooker and Dutch Oven Set a try. The assembly directions were fairly straight forward, so I had it together in about 10 minutes. I decided to make something simple the first time out, so I chose polenta.

I had read that the secret to most solar cooking was to get the food on early and let it cook throughout the day. It’s difficult to burn food in this type of cooker. Since the pot isn’t in contact with a burner you don’t even have to stir it! The biggest thing I had to do was move the cooker to catch the best sun every couple of hours.

As the sun moved overhead the cooker’s configuration had to be changed to make the most of the sun’s rays.

It probably took about six hours, but at the end of the day I had a good sized batch of delicious polenta!

Next week I think I’ll use this and my GoSun Sport to cook an entire meal.