Discussion Board

Yay! I now have a "Sun Oven" from Sun Ovens International, http://www.sunoven.com/usa.asp --I think this is the same one S B has, am I right?

Anyway, I cooked some roasted potatoes the first day (best potatoes I ever ate), and the next day some lentils (best lentils I ever ate). I'm delighted and can't wait to try more things. It's much easier than I thought it would be!

Question 1: For those here who've used a solar cooker, what foods should I try next? Which things do you like best?

Qu. 2: I'm not sure I'm focusing it correctly toward the sun. Even at noon, it only reached 270 degrees, which was fine for what I'm cooking, but it would be fun to get it hotter and make cornbread or something. The instructions say to adjust according to shadows in the box, but I can't seem to "see" the shadows they are talking about. My perception problem or something. Is there some trick to getting it vertically oriented? Side to side is easy because I can move it so the shadows on the ground are the same on both sides. Somehow I think this is something simple that others can do but I don't "get."

I'm still new at this too, and have the same oven. I also found aiming the thing difficult...I ended up standing back, viewing the sun, and then drawing an imaginary line directly from the sun to the window of the oven and adjusting it according to my imaginary line and also with as well as I could detect shadow/no-shadow. Mine gets up to around 300, or hovers between that and as low as around what you said yours was.

Besides baked taters (sweet and regular) and stews as you mentioned...or did you just say lentils??? Anyway, I imagined you said lentil stew...which is really good from the solar oven...other stews as well...veggie pot pie or fruit cobblers (same idea...liquidy stuff with a crust over top) do really well in there...they taste better than cooked quicker in the indoor oven, and brown very nicely. I haven't had enough time at home during sunny days to try much else yet...I did try a big dish of collard greens once and they were burny on top...didn't like them much becuase they tasted kind of burnt. I think maybe I'll stick with fire cookin' for those types things.

I have a glass casserole dish that fits just perfect on the shelf...I can squeeze a couple (or more if they aren't too large) of taters in there with the casserole dish too. I had to go out and buy that dish...my other pots and pans were all too large...even though it's usually just two of us now, I'm still used to cooking for a hungry teenie-bopper and her hungry friends...hard to get used to cooking smaller quantities and I just don't ahve small pots and pans too much.

Ooooo, fruit cobbler sounds good! I'll try that next, maybe tomorrow unless it rains. Yummy idea!

Regarding the pan, I did get the lightweight enamel pot that came with the oven, it's about 10" across and fairly shallow. It is smaller than many of my other pots but seems to hold quite a lot of food! I put 6 russets in there, cut into medium-sized pieces. I saw a picture on the oven's website where somebody had put ears of corn into the oven, around the pot. I would love to try that!

I also meant to ask if anybody has attempted to use cast iron in there. I know it's not recommended, because it will slow the cooking down by absorbing so much of the heat, but I see in the pictures there that some people do use cast iron...? I'm not that tempted to experiment with that now just because the enamel pot works perfectly, but I was curious.

Oh, and another thing! For baking, somewhere on one of the zillions of web sites I looked at, they mentioned using a tile as a heat sink, in order to put some heat under your pan as well as over and around. This seems like a really good idea--if I can find the right sized tile somewhere, in a dark color or paint it black. So, you preheat the oven with the tile in it, then once it's hot enough you put your pan in. Makes sense! Has anybody tried this?

you mean like a clay or ceramic tile or something?

I've never tried cast iron...however...I remember we used to put cast iron pans on our woodstove a long time ago, and then when they were hot, we'd move them over to another room where we might be sitting doing something...cuz they would give out a little heat...so...I wonder if you had some small cast iron piece that you could set in the bottom of the oven that would radiate more heat too, like the tile.

I didn't wanna try cooking in cast iron, cause mine are all too big to fit in there, and I thought they might be heavy, etc.

Setting the corn around does sound good...have to try that.

If SB sees this, I'm sure she can tell us all the tricks...

Yes, I think something like quarry tile is what they were talking about. I stopped by Lowe's today and bought a few 4" quarry tiles (32 cents each!) which I will spraypaint black. Then I will try this! I will set my baking pan on top of the preheated tiles.

I think you are right that cast iron would perform the same function, but the pieces I have may be too large--hmmm, I should check to make sure. I guess you could preheat your cast iron in the sun oven, then add your cornmeal batter...? That sounds like it might work.

Do you think it's safe to put spray painted tiles in a heated environment with your food?????

You couldn't find glazed black tiles, or dark ones?

I don't know if that sounds so safe to do.

Well...I got some BBQ paint which is heat resistant (withstands high heat up to 1000 degrees) and is meant for coating barbecue grills inside and out. Once it's 'cured', ie. heated once, it supposedly doesn't outgas. So, no, I'm not any more concerned about that than I am about the materials that are inside the cooker already...what is that black substance forming the inside of the cooker? Some kind of plastic? Fiber glass? What kind of paint is on that? I'm not going to worry about it. The food doesn't touch any of those surfaces, and the oven only gets up to about 300 degrees anyway...

Oh, Okay.

I guess the word "paint" just sounded kinda scary...but it sounds as safe as anything else involved. You might have to heat it once...

We used to buy this woodstove polish to keep it black and the stuff just about gagged us all to death the first time we lit up the stove for the winter...supposedly, according to the label, it was safe stuff for heating.

Let me know how it works...if the temps seem to go up or whatever else!

I did check with my resident physicist; he thinks that the substance in the paint (once the solvent is dry) is "graphite black" which is an extremely inert substance; that is, harmless. He says almost nothing else would be able to withstand the high temperatures that this paint claims to. Now, of course the solvent itself is highly dangerous and it says so on the can, but once that's gone presumably you don't have any nasties there. I'll bet that woodstove polish was the same inert ingredient.

Anyway, a good alternative would be a piece of slate, if you could get one the right size or cut it to fit.

No home should be without a resident physicist...

I figured out a nifty way to focus the sun oven correctly, and I think it works. I got the idea from an old book on solar cookers, which had instructions for building your own. On theirs, they had a wooden knob mounted on the glass itself (by drilling a hole, eek!). In the center of that knob was a nail with the head filed off. Because this knob & its nail is exactly perpendicular to the glass, when the glass is pointed directly at the sun, the nail casts no shadow. That's the principle.

Now on this sun oven, of course it's easy to orient it horizontally, by looking at the shadows on the ground on either side of the box. So then to orient it vertically, stand behind the box and look down at the two latch-pins. They are on the wood to the left of the glass, but are exactly perpendicular to the glass. Shift the box up or down until the shadow of the latch-pin disappears. I think that this really works, because when I did this today the oven started heating up immediately. I don't think my eyeball guesstimate was correct.

I made a pilaf with whole-grain sorghum (mixed reviews, maybe needs different flavors than rice does) and 4 ears of sweetcorn which I put in there for about 45 minutes at 250-ish. I would have cooked the corn for a shorter time but was waiting for DH and didn't want to serve it cold. But, it wasn't overcooked! It was delicious.

I figured there must be some better formula for directing the thing toward the sun...sounds like you've found it! Sort of the sun-dial principle...should work very well.

We've got clouds and rain...a busy weekend ahead, but if I can get the chance, and the sun comes back out...I'll see if I can be more exact about aiming my oven...if all else fails me, I'll just go back to the ol' eyeball, imaginary line method .

Wonder where SB is???? She's gotta be an expert on using this thing.

I knew you'd chime in here! Thanks for all the great tips. I read about using black cloth a long time ago and had forgotten about it! Seems like that will be a big help. I can't wait to try more of these things!

I am especially glad to have your tips on cooking rice and will be trying that soon. This is great--since the cooker arrived, I haven't used my kitchen appliances once, except for making oatmeal and boiling water for tea! The gas company is going to wonder about us...

Thanks again,
Anna

Thanks for sharing your solar oven knowhow, SB!