Re-Heating with Solar

Yesterday was yet another hot day and our plans for schnitzel went out the window. Oma and Opa came to town and that was our planned dinner.

Instead, we fired up the solar funnel and put on a pot of water for pasta. I set it out pretty early so I could do other things and let it get good and hot. Around 4:30 or 5 I wrapped a towel around the pot and set it on the stove to stay hot.

Next I put on a couple bags of spaghetti sauce from the batch made a couple weeks ago and let that get hot. It was heated in my oval cast iron pot with lid and took about an hour to go from refrigerator cold to piping hot. Not too bad, and since I didn't actually check it, it could have been faster.

We did finish the pasta on the stove, but the 2 gallons of water was boiling within a minute and the burner was on for a total of about 15 to cook 2 batches.

Soon I will set up another solar cooker, probably a box version, so I can do more at a time. Of course if I can figure a good way to set more then 1 pot on the solar funnel, I could simply use it.

While not a new item on the cooking with the sun menu, it goes to show how you can use it for many daily cooking needs.

Solar Spaghetti Sauce

We eat a lot of spaghetti here so it was inevitable I'd be cooking it outside when I could.

I made a basic meat sauce with-
2 pounds ground and browned beef
2- #10 cans of diced tomatoes
half a #10 can of tomato sauce (the other half was used for the Solar Chili recipe)
about 6 cups of onions
6 or 8 large garlic cloves chopped up
basil (dry)
salt and pepper

Simply browned the beef in the 3 gallon stock pot on the stove, added the onions and garlic off the heat to sweat, added the tomato product and seasonings and put it on to cook. This went out at about noon and stayed out till time to eat around 6pm. It happily boiled away a good part of the day and I turned it away from the sun once in a while just to slow it down a bit.

Putting it on to cook involved placing the covered pot in the turkey bag, closing it with a twist tie and placing full in the sun on the solar funnel.

The recipe made enough for dinner and 10- 3cup bags to freeze for later meals.

My first time

For the last couple years I have read a bit here and there about the practice of cooking with the sun. Since first reading about it I have imagined myself one day giving it a try, only to put it off til later.

Well recently I decided it was finally time and so started looking for the exact method I would start the experiment with. Shortly after having decided on a set of plans, we got word that my father in law was bringing his solar cooker that same weekend on his visit. This meant of course that I could use his first before making my own which was a good thing. It helped me finalize my own plans.

The first thing we made was a roasted chicken with potatoes. We set up his cooker, put a whole, defrosted chicken into a black pot with a clear glass lid, surrounded it with cut up potatoes and onions and placed the whole thing into a large turkey bag. The kind of bag you put into the oven. The idea is the bag allows the suns rays in to heat the pot while holding the built up heat inside the bag allowing it to cook at a higher temperature.

Later that evening, when everyone returned home from a day at the water falls, we had chicken that was falling off the bone, moist and delicious. The potatoes were cooked through and so were the onions. I was really surprised to be honest. I mean, there was no doubt it would work. After all, my father in law had done it before and so had countless others. But seeing it and reading about it are two completely different things.

So of course all I could do the next couple of days was think about what I was going to do once I made my own solar cooker. This blog is one of the results and in it I will try and keep track of my experiences as well as put up recipes that we have tried. This will be my note book and with any luck, maybe even the extra nudge needed to get others to give it a try.

Since my first time one month ago today, I have made another chicken, stew, soup, a couple pots of beans, a couple pots of chili, a large pot of spaghetti sauce, 3 cakes and just today I baked my first loaf of bread. Each of these things will be discussed to a degree based on memory and future items will (hopefully) have a bit more detail.

For the record, I live in Oregon. So if you think you don't get enough sun or maybe not an intense enough sun, keep that in mind. You may just be surprised at what you can do at home.