Solar Cooking Tips

Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your solar oven. Also check out this post on solar cooking resources, with lots of links to other helpful sites. And, be sure to keep up with the adventures of the Solar Oven Chef in Arizona as she strives to cook every single day with the sun.


Plan ahead

Even if you're not sure whether you'll be cooking outside or not, set up your solar oven early. That way it will be preheated if and when you’re ready to cook. This is especially important during the winter months when the sun is available less hours than during the summer.

Plan your meals ahead of time. If, like me, you don't particularly like doing a week's worth of meal-planning ahead of time, at least sit down first thing in the morning and decide what you will be making for dinner. This will allow you to determine what foods and dishes could be cooked by the sun.

Get the food out into the solar oven as soon as it is preheated. Foods take a little longer to cook in the solar oven generally than they do inside. Make sure you have time to finish your dishes or cook multiple dishes by getting started early.

If you are not home during the day, orient your solar oven to where the sun will be at midday. Be cautious about putting meat out in an unattended solar oven to avoid issues with food poisoning if the meat is not kept at a high enough temperature throughout the day.


What to cook

Anything you can cook in an oven or slow cooker can be cooked in a solar oven. You can toast, bake, roast, steam, and boil foods in a solar oven. You can cook foods for cold dishes to eat later – such as potatoes for potato salad, rice for rice salad, or green beans for a cold salad. You can prepare hot dishes to go straight to the table for dinner. (If the sun is gone before dinner time, keep your food hot with a retained heat cooking box.)

See this flyer for a long list of foods that can be cooked in a solar oven. You can also check out my solar cooking log where I keep a list of everything I'm cooking in my ovens.


Maximize Your Solar Cooking

If you are home during the day, you can accomplish far more with your solar oven. (You can still cook with it if you’re gone all day.)

Orient solar oven to sun

If you are home during the day and can tend your solar oven, adjust it every hour or so to maximize the amount of sunlight hitting it. In the winter, the sun’s angle is lower so you will need to adjust your oven accordingly.

Use the entire day’s sun

As soon as one dish is done, remove it and put in the next. Finish off the day by heating a big pot of water to wash all the dishes.

Maximize the oven space

Use all of the space within the oven for cooking by using large pots, multiple pots, and tucking things (like potatoes or corn on the cob wrapped in foil) around the edges.

Large pot - If you are cooking some potatoes to make mashed potatoes for your dinner, use a bigger pot to cook more for the next few days. You can reheat the cooked potatoes for a quick meal, make potato salad, or shred them to cook as hash browns for breakfast.


Multiple pots – if you need to cook several different dishes, use smaller pots that will fit next to each other or can stack. The Tulsi has a lot of floor space and comes with 4 covered pots that can all be cooking at the same time. Those same pots, or other small pots, can be stacked for use in the taller SunOven.


In this instance, I put the bottom lid on the pot upside down to create a flat surface to stack the second pot.

Tuck in around the edges – At the solar cooking demos in town, folks often wrap potatoes and corn on the cob in foil and tuck them in the oven around the pot cooking the main dish.


Saving energy

Cooking with a solar oven saves gas or electricity normally used inside to cook the food. It also saves additional energy in the summer needed to cool the house off when cooking or baking inside heats up the kitchen.


Rather than bring your hot solar-cooked pots right into the house to cool, set them outside on a cooling rack in the shade. Set a timer and bring them in within two hours. If not serving the food immediately, store in the refrigerator to avoid the possibility of food poisoning.


I don't leave the lids off while the dishes are cooling outside because bugs would get into them. Also, my dogs might eat my dinner.


Solar ovens can also be used to reheat food. The Tulsi oven, with its large floor space available is ideal for this. In fact, I purchased a set of enamel-covered metal camping plates (at a thrift store, of course) just so that I could reheat food in the solar oven. I can prepare two plates of food and cover them with the other two plates for reheating.


If you cook with the sun, please share your favorite tips.