Solar cooking woes - is solar cooking just not for me?

Last year I found a GoSun Grill. Evacuated tubes work well for water heating here, so I figured that the tube-style of solar cooker would work better than the other kind.

I haven’t used it anywhere near as much as I thought I would so was thinking of selling it, but first I need to figure out if there would be ways for me to get more use from it.

My issues:

• Cooking lots of food. This style is supposed to feed 6-8 people, but really for 8 hungry people it will just cook either meat, or vegetables, or rice, not everything that’s needed for a full meal.

• Also to do with cooking lots of food - it pre-heats quite quickly empty in full sun, but adding two full trays of cold/room temperature food it takes a long time to get hot again.

• The weather here changes a lot. It can be sunny one minute and then overcast the next.

• Trees around the land - I can find the perfect spot in the morning, and then it’s in the shade within a couple of hours, needs to be moved, and then again needs to be moved later on because it’s in the shade again - if I miss any of these moves then it delays the meal or completely messes it up.

I am wondering if anyone else here has experienced these challenges, and how you went about resolving them?

What approaches do you take to solar cooking? And what are your favourite things to cook?

Hi Kate,
Congrats for solar cooking! I understand about trying to catch the sun. My house/porch is south facing in the northern hemisphere, so I placed my All American Sun Oven on a table with castors, roll it outside, and rotate the table a bit every 1/2 hour or so when cooking in it in order to maintain high heat when I need to.

I agree, full sun cooks better than cloudy days…such is the nature of solar cooking for me and solar power for my home.

Agreed, the capacity though spacious, would be limited when feeding a meal with a wide variety of dishes to 8 people. Some folks get 2 units to feed lager groups.

I like this model because it has a leveling rack to keep the pots off of the bottom for good air circulation, and the pots that came with the oven stack two high so I can cook more than one dish at a time. The dish pictured below is a whole head of cauliflower, surrounded by Brussels sprouts, onions and seasonings. I did put the lid on the pot for cooking after I took the photos, and I could have stacked an identical pan on top filled with an entirely different recipe.

I am especially pleased with how it bakes the shell of eggs when I want to make “boiled” eggs. I don’t use any water and can cook the eggs in the paper egg carton. Even with freshly laid eggs, they peel easily.

I’ve used the solar oven to cook veggies, lentil soups, chicken soup, venison stew, eggs, and dehydrate herbs. It does take preplanning and nothing gets done in a hurry. Most of my ingredients go in the oven room temp, but sometimes I set things in their pots in the sun while the oven is preheating to give the food a head start and lessen the temp variation.

Here is a link to the site where I bought my oven. The videos here are helpful.
https://www.sunoven.com/how-it-works/

Best to you!

EDIT: I’ve also make pineapple upside down cake and blueberry cobbler in the sun oven.  Yum!

There are many different manufactured and DIY solar cooker models you can try, some cook fast but limited amount of food, some cook a lot of food almost as fast as a gas range, and some are perfect slow cookers. The best source for all possible currently manufactured solar cookers, as well as DIY plans anyone can make that are just as powerful, check out Solar Cookers International's wiki - solarcooking.org  You can also learn more about the many devoted solar cooker makers, promoters, and power users at the Solar Cooking Museum's YT channel - youtube.com/@SolarCookingMuseum. --Luther Krueger  museum (at) bigbluesun (dot) net

Luther, welcome to Permies. Thank you for your post and information.

We have a Sun Oven.  In actual use, we use it maybe 30 meals a year. But that is 30 days a year we don’t use lp.

I've been solar cooking with homemade box cookers for about 20 years now. I've never made every part of a meal for 8 people with the sun!  I think maybe your goals are too ambitious.  If you feel you don't have the space for a cooker you aren't using all the time, by all means, sell it. I'm all for clearing the clutter. But many of us do have cooking tools that we seldom use. (I have a turkey roasting pan that I use at best twice a year.)
I use my solar box cooker as I would a crockpot or slow cooker. I use it maybe once a week. Often just for beans or other long cooking item, I also like to bake cakes and brownies in it. Like John said, that´s reducing my gas consumption a bit and I'm happy with that.

Since solar ovens are slow cookers access to consistent sun is just part of the equation. Having to adjust the oven to movement is again just another part of the process. Here is a picture of  the solar cooker my wife made for me that does address portability. Just to the right of her tortellini is a collapsed oven.