You wake up in the morning and find that
there is no electricity; you wait to see if it will be back, sadly it doesn’t.
The next morning, you wake up and the situation isn’t better. You stay without electricity
for a week, thanks to your previous gas tank refill - you’re able to survive
the week. What if you didn’t have gas? How would you prepare your food?
Survival prepping is crucial in these days when uncertainties can strike
anytime. You need to find a way you can get through the tough days. If you have
a solar reflector oven, probably life wouldn’t be a misery – at least you would
cook and bake. Solar reflector ovens can
become handy appliances in those days when you have no gas, no electricity.
What
is a solar oven and how does it work?
A solar
reflector oven or solar oven or simply solar cooker is a device that uses
sunlight as a source for cooking. Instead of converting sunlight or solar
energy to electricity, solar reflector
ovens trap light particles also known as photons to help generate heat.
Using metal reflectors placed around the oven, the oven is able to maximize
light input. Usually, light photons pass through a transparent glass placed on top
of the oven, striking the inside of an insulated box.
To get the
best results, you place a dark, metal pot at the center area of the oven, where
it is able to absorb the incoming photons. After the cooking pot gets warmer
than the air surrounding it, the heat tries to escape to the cooler space. But
because it is unable to break through the barrier the glass creates, it will
remain trapped inside. The heat will be reflected back to the pot, often
allowing the temperature of the oven to rise rapidly – scorching 400 degrees
Fahrenheit or so.
Think of it
this way: you leave your car outside on a sunny summer day, after several hours
you come back and try to enter the vehicle. You find that the seats and
interior space are just too hot. This is referred to as the greenhouse effect.
More often than not, sunlight enters the vehicle through the windows where it
heats up the seats and soon the entire interior gets hot. Solar reflector
panels operate in a similar way; however, these compact insulators provide you
with an opportunity to cook food in a cooking pan rather than on your car’s
dash.
What
is a solar oven used for?
Solar
reflector ovens provide a way of cooking food to people who may be living off the
grid or in areas where power is limited. For example, a camper may take with
them a solar oven to use it to cook food in the wild where there is no electricity.
At home, a budget-conscious individual may use the solar reflector oven to help
lower electricity and gas bills, especially in summer months. Survivalists may
also use these cookers to allow them to survive a predicament or disaster.
Sometimes, disaster can strike where there is an interruption of electricity
which may take longer to restore – imagine going for an entire week without
power. Solar reflector cookers can help you survive the week – you prepare your
food, bake, and even heat water.
What
are the four types of solar ovens?
Primarily,
solar oven constructions come in three different designs and each has its own
set of advantages. The choice of design revolves around the type of food you
can cook using the solar reflector oven, the location you are going to use the
oven, and the availability of materials and resources. The oven designs include:
·
Box ovens
·
Parabolic
cookers
·
Panel
cookers
·
And, Rocket
stoves (though not exactly a solar oven)
Box ovens
Among the
common solar oven designs, the box oven is basically a box with reflectors.
When sunlight lands on the reflector, the photons or solar particles are
directed onto one or several thin black pots that absorb the heat and cook
whatever you are cooking. The box helps provide insulation that insulates the
oven to retain the heat being generated.
A transparent
cover placed over the box’s top surface may be added to assist in trapping the
heat. With box ovens, they are safe and require little supervision, and they
are easy to use. It is possible to leave the oven unattended for long hours. It’s
also difficult to burn food that’s been left in the over. Box ovens can attain
internal temperatures of 300 degrees Fahrenheit or 149 degrees Celsius
Parabolic
cookers
With the parabolic
cooker, it uses a large, curved reflector that directs energy at a pot. These
cookers are able to reach high temperatures pretty quickly thus reducing the
time you would take to cook. However, you will need to regularly monitor and
adjust the angle of the reflector. Also, parabolic cookers are able to only
heat a single pot of food at any one given time. It is more difficult to build
because of the complex design; however, parabolic cooker is capable of
attaining temperatures necessary for frying or grilling.
Panel
cookers
When it
comes to panel cookers, they are regarded as a hybrid design incorporating
elements of parabolic cookers and box ovens. Panel cookers utilize a paneled
reflector that concentrates solar rays on a pot sheathed in a transparent
insulation bag. These cookers are easy to build and require fewer tools and
materials. Panel cookers don’t require supervision and adjustment as you would
need to do with parabolic cookers.
Again, panel
cookers allow your food to attain internal temperatures similar to those of
slow cookers. They work well with foods containing a high amount of moisture.
Rocket
stoves
Although not
true solar ovens, rocket stoves present important cooking options to help you reduce
fuel usage. Since many areas experience cold and rainy seasons that prevent
consistent solar cooking, a backup type of cooking may be needed. Using open
fires tends to waste wood and other fuel, but rocket stoves – sheet metal or
chimney clay – can concentrate heat allowing you to use less fuel. Like solar
ovens, rocket stoves tend to be economic and are easy to construct. They come
as a backup when other solar ovens are unable to cook.
Can
a solar oven work on a cloudy day?
When using solar reflector ovens, ideal
cooking results are realized when there is bright sun and no clouds that impede
or inhabit the skies. Solar ovens are entirely dependent on solar, so without
the sun, it would mean there is no solar cooking or the cooking is slow.
However, to be able to cook using solar ovens, it doesn’t mean you need to have
a completely cloudless sky. A few clouds are normal and expected, as long as the
shadow is present, you can still cook. However, the deeper and dark the shadow,
the strong the sun rays, meaning your oven gets hotter.
You
may accomplish cooking though on days when clouds on the sky are high and thin.
However, it will slow down the cooking – if the weather is cloudy, you want to
begin cooking earlier because it’s going to take longer. Longer, slow moderate
cooking like veggies, chili and stew can do fine when the skies are less than
bright, but only if you allow more time. On the other hand, baking would take
longer - the temperatures won’t be as
high as you would want – so you would expect to have mixed baking results.
If it’s very cloudy, it would be better
you not really start any cooking, not until you see signs of the sky clearing
later on. Probably, you may use the
solar oven on very cloudy days to warm or reheat already cooked food - that
would work.
How
long does it take to cook things in a solar oven?
Among
the most commonly asked questions regarding solar reflector ovens is; how long it takes to cook in these ovens.
Well, the answer is not simple. With solar ovens, it’s not as easy as heating
the typical oven to 350 degrees where you bake for 15 minutes; it’s not like
setting the microwave at high temperatures for 3 minutes. With solar ovens,
they are more of slow cookers that sit and slowly cook your food to perfection.
Before you can begin cooking with solar ovens, you need to plan ahead and you
have to be patient. If the weather isn’t consistently clear, you find that you
could spend a lot of time cooking.
Depending
on the weather outside and the food you are cooking, the time will vary. You
can expect a majority of foods to take the oven twice as long as it would take
with traditional cooking methods.
For
example, during midsummer, at midday on a clear-sky afternoon, you could do
casserole dish made of macaroni and cheese in about three to four hours.
However, you have to brown the sausages in advance then cook your pasta and
combine the entire ingredients before you place the whole mixture within a
casserole dish to cook. In the same weather condition, it would take you about
seven minutes to fry an egg using a solar oven while white rice would cook in
about thirty minutes or so.
In
reality, the time it would take you to cook in solar ovens depends on many
things. The biggest factor is the oven’s temperature or how hot it is inside of
the box.
3
great solar ovens available to buy now on Amazon
If you would want to explore the fun
with solar reflector ovens, these top pieces are available on Amazon.
The Camper is a solar reflector oven
that is large enough to allow you to cook various foods. It can hold two large
pots or 12-inch frypans, and tall pots. Its cooking area measures 12 inches
deep and has a width of 17inches.
This lightweight solar reflector oven is
portable. You can carry it with you in your camping expedition and sets up in
just minutes. It attains temperatures of about 360 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
It also has enhanced wind resistance and takes away the guesswork of aligning
it with the sun.
A portable solar reflector oven, the
Sunflair Deluxe with Dehydrating Racks is a versatile unit. You can use it to
bake pizza and cookies. It is easy to use and no assembly needed. You can take
it with you on your camping trip.
Conclusion
Solar
reflector ovens offer you an ideal way to cook, bake, and grill
your food in the open sky. They are a
necessity in areas that are off-grid or experience prolonged interruptions of
electricity. You may want to use solar ovens, especially the portable ones
during your adventures in the wild. Also, you can use them when you want to
reduce your energy bills and your area has consistent clear skies with long
hours of sunlight.
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