Solar Cooking

Solar Powered Cooking

We got together with a group of friends and made four different kind of solar ovens.

The first one was large (2’x3′). My mom helped with this one. We used a box inside another box and we insulated it with foam insulation on the bottom and newspapers on the side. We were hoping this would allow the temperature to get about 300 degrees. We lined the inside of the box with foil to keep the heat in and lined that with black paper to absorb the heat. We used foam board covered in a paper mirror sheeting for reflectors. We attached those on 3 sides. Inside we used a rack to raise the food off the bottom of the oven and to be able to get the best angle of the sun. We also needed to tip the whole box to make sure we didn’t have shadows inside the oven. Then we covered the top with sheets of glass to help insulate more.

The second ovens were made out of pizza boxes. After we cut our windows, we used slow cooker oven liners for the windows instead of plastic wrap so we would not have a chemical reaction with the heated plastic. We also insulated these with a thin layer of foam on the bottom before the foil and black paper.

The third ovens we made were hot dog cookers made out of pringle’s chips cans. We cut a slit down the middle and made flaps to open and then used the cooker liners for windows again. Last we drilled holes in each end for a skewer to fit through.

The fourth oven was a funnel shaped cooker. We covered poster board with foil and shaped that into a funnel and used a foil covered piece of foam for the base. Then we covered a jar with black paper to use for cooking.

Into the (preheated) big oven we put chocolate chip cookie dough. And to compared ovens we put cookie dough in one of the pizza box ovens as well. The cookies in the big oven were done in about 20 minutes. The oven had reached about 250 degrees. The smaller oven took about 40 minutes and had reached 200 degrees.

In the rest of the pizza box ovens we had chips and cheese for nachos and one box had an egg cooking. We all used dark colored pans inside the cookers. The cheese only took about 10-15 minutes to melt. The egg took about an hour.

In the pringles cans we cooked hot dogs which took 1/2 an hour to reach 170 degrees. We were hungry and couldn’t wait longer than that.

The jar inside the funnel cooker had green beans from our garden in it. They never really got done. The temp only reached 160 degrees but this was probably because it was really cold to start with so it was taking to long to heat. And then it got cloudy. Oh well, no veggies that day!

This was super fun to do. We had a lot of success. We were surprised how quickly the cookies got done even though it didn’t get as hot as we were hoping it would.

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