Solar Oven Triumph: Fluffy Egg Strata

...nd for folks who are interested. Before that, though, I want to talk about solar cooking in general. To be honest, learning to use a solar oven is not very straightforward. In a way, it feels like learning how to cook all over again, but with the handicap of not knowing how long any dish should spend in the oven. Imagine if back when you were making your first batch of cookies, your mom’s old Betty Crocker told you they would be done anywhere betw...

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Announcing Our New Solar Cooking Initiative

...made oven and see how they stack up. But my primary goal in this season of solar cooking is to figure out whether, if properly used, a solar cooker can create meals of the same quality as those I turn out with my kitchen stove. Not “It’s not bad for solar” but “Hey….this is scrumptious!” More than that, I want to figure out what solar ovens do better than real ovens. I want to master the vocabulary of solar cooking. I figure the learning curve is...

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Best veggies to cook in a solar oven

...n, and may be a good way to get started if you are a little intimidated by solar cooking Sun oven proponents claim that sun ovens cook veggies better than any other device, because they can be cooked dry, and the slow heat brings out their flavor. This is true to some extent. This is what I’ve learned about sun oven veggies. The cooking results are analogous to steaming. Vegetables which do well with steam cooking do well when tossed into a sun ov...

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Waxed Cloth Food Wrap (Made in a solar oven for bonus self-righteousness points)

...perhaps drying herbs as well. And for those of you who were following our solar cooking initiative, it has been on hiatus because our weather this May was dominated by a heavy marine layer which kept the skies overcast until mid-afternoon. I love this weather, personally, but it has put a wrench in the cooking experiments. June, however, is coming in hot and bright. Usually June in LA is characterized by these same overcast conditions–we call it...

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A Parvati Solar Cooker

...ooker here. We found both of these cookers (and many more) via the amazing Solar Cooking Archive. For the Parvati cooker, we cut the cardboard according to the plans, and affixed the aluminum foil with spray glue. For our first pot of rice we used a black enamel pot to better absorb the heat of the sun’s rays, and wrapped it in a roasting bag to increase the efficiency of the cooker. A five gallon bucket made a convenient stand and did not have to...

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