Sun-kissed cuisine: Cook solar, not fossil

May 28, 2007
By Darcy Maulsby

Whether you’re camping, ice fishing, picnicking or preparing a meal at home, an environmentally-friendly solar oven allows you to enjoy a leisurely day, knowing the sun is hard at work gently cooking your dinner.

“As energy prices continue to rise and more people try to become carbon neutral, interest in solar cooking is growing considerably,” says Paul Munsen, president of Sun Ovens International, Inc., based in Elburn, Ill. “Solar cooking is also the most forgiving cooking method you’ll find.”

In a Sun Oven, sunlight enters through a glass door, and the black surfaces inside the oven capture and transform the sun’s energy into heat that cannot escape the chamber. On a sunny day, the oven can reach 300 degrees Fahrenheit in about 25 minutes. The temperature rises slowly and evenly, allowing complex carbohydrates time to break down into simple sugars that emanate subtle, natural flavors. You can bake, boil or steam your favorite recipes, and since the ovens’ even temperatures prevent burning, food doesn’t need to be stirred while it cooks.

Solar cooking can be accomplished two ways. If you refocus the oven to follow the sun every 25 to 30 minutes, cooking times and methods will be very similar to cooking with a conventional stove or oven. A Sun Oven also can be used for slow cooking; prepare your dinner, put it in the Sun Oven and point the oven where the sun will be approximately halfway through the time you will be gone.

“If you run late, there’s no need to worry since the Sun Oven will keep your food warm, moist and fresh for hours,” says Munsen, who enjoys roasting chicken with the solar cooking process.

Solar cooking can be used year-round since an oven’s effectiveness depends on the brightness of the day, not the outside air temperature. Often a 40-degree day with clear skies and low humidity will allow food to cook faster than a 100-degree day with high humidity. “I’ve baked bread in my Sun Oven, and it takes only 45 minutes on a sunny day, or about two hours on a less sunny day,” says Munson.

Due to their compact, portable size, Sun Ovens are popular with a wide variety of users, including hunters who appreciate the way the cooking process retains the moisture in game meat to ice fishermen who can clean and cook their catch at the lake.

Since there is never a danger of fire, solar cooking is safe enough for children to handle. “People also like using the ovens at home in the summer when they don’t want to heat up the kitchen with a conventional oven,” adds Munsen. The ovens also work well for drying tomatoes and other foods.

Perhaps the most promising application for solar cooking can be found in the developing world. Sun Ovens, for example, were developed more than 20 years ago by Tom Burns, whose involvement in Rotary International showed him how thousands of people around the world had a desperate need for a way to cook that did not require cutting down trees. Today Sun Ovens are used in nearly 128 countries.

“In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for example, people spend 55 percent of their total income on charcoal for cooking,” says Munsen, who noted that the resulting deforestation triggers soil erosion, harms agriculture and hinders food production. “Our goal is to provide an alternative.”

Rowena Gerber, a dedicated humanitarian and teacher at Miami Country Day School, Fla., has helped her elementary students raise money from the organic gardens they plant to send solar ovens to nations like Haiti and Afghanistan. She adds that Sun Ovens also can be used to sterilize water.

“The more this technology becomes common knowledge, the more it will be a solution,” Gerber says.