And while many people joke about frying an egg on a sidewalk with the use of a solar oven you can easily harness the sun to prepare food at home or when you are camped miles from civilization.
How can you use solar energy to cook food.
You can even pasteurize water simple solar ovens made of cardboard boxes can reach 325.
Solar cooking with stored energy unlike conventional slow cookers which use around 300 watts this one had to run at a power of 50 to 60 watts so required max insulation.
The second good thing about using solar energy to cook is that it does not use any of the limited sources of energy non renewable energy which makes our environment a safer place to live.
If you plan to use your solar cooker on a regular basis to ensure healthier cooking and energy savings or only intend to use your cooker on lovely sunny days to replace your weekly braai sustainable co za has the solar cooker for you.
And this heat energy is then retained by the pot and the food by the means of a covering or lid.
To green up your life you can build and cook with a solar oven.
Solar powered camp cooking.
A solar cooker can cook anything that can be cooked in a conventional oven.
They use a free renewable energy source and do not pollute the environment.
You can set a solar oven anywhere you.
Just start your dinner in the morning and turn the oven a few times to make sure it s facing the sun.
Although it is something of a novelty exercise cooking with solar energy is much easier than you think.
Using stoves and ovens we can cook foods like meat vegetables beans rice bread and fruit in just about any way.
You can t broil in a solar oven but you can bake boil and roast.
You can t rely on precision temperature control so you have to stick with foods that aren t fussy.
The food will take longer to cook but that s no problem.
At the other end of the scale you can also use solar energy simply to cook a meal.
With a box pan aluminum foil a cooking bag duct tape man s best friend styrofoam insulation and a thermometer you ll be cooking in no time at all.
It is not the sun s heat that cooks the food nor is it the outside ambient temperature though this can somewhat affect the rate or time required to cook but rather it is the suns rays that are converted to heat energy that cook the food.
Sunlight isn t hot in and of itself.
Solar cookers solar cookers are used to cook food and pasteurise water for safe drinking.
They can roast meat steam vegetables and even bake bread.
This means that you can use a solar oven anywhere that has lots of sun.
Solar cooking does not require any electricity but uses solar thermal energy to cook the food.
If you ve ever seared your legs on a hot metal slide you understand the cooking potential of the sun.
All you need is a device that can help in converting the solar energy into electricity so that you can carry on with your chores with that.
A solar oven can bake at temperatures above 350 f.
You can make almost all.
But plenty of foods fit the bill.