Category — Solar Cooking

One of the occupational hazards of solar cooking in Michigan is the weather. We really can’t count on sun every day. Nor can we depend on the brightly shining morning sun to stick around for the afternoon.

The other day, I prepared my so-easy-it-makes-you-blush Salsa Chicken. This dish consists of Salsa and Chicken. First I place the chicken in the round black pan. Then I add enough salsa or a can of tomatoes with green chilies to cover it. Put the lid on. Voila! That’s it. Into the solar cooker with the pan.

A half an hour later, the sun disappeared behind some substantial clouds, where I guessed it planned to spend the rest of the day. Potatoes, onions, garlic– I could have left in the cooker to eek out whatever rays they might capture. Raw chicken, I knew however, would not fair so well. So the chicken went into the refrigerator until closer to dinnertime. I then poached the chicken– not my favorite way to cook chicken, but a pretty good save under the circumstances.

The episode reminded me that, for me, solar cooking is an adventure, not a complete necessity. The almost invisible appliances of our kitchen are easy to take for granted. Having to resort to using the stove didn’t mean less fuel for heating or cooking over a fire because of a power shortage. Solar cooking is one option for us.

I came up with a new recipe today, based on this recipe for Grandmother’s Crustless Pie from solarcooking.org. Mine is actually very different, but the recipe collection from the site provided the inspiration. It’s not really a cobbler and not really a crisp either. I’m at a loss for the perfect name so Apple Oatmeal Crisp will have to suffice.

You’ll need:

4 apples, pealed and sliced

1/4 cup sugar

Cinnamon

1/4 cup butter

1 cup old-fashioned oats

1 cup brown sugar

Butter a round black roaster. Mix the apples and sugar in the pan. In a bowl, combine the oatmeal, brown sugar, cinnamon and butter and sprinkle over apple mixture. Cover and bake in solar oven. Cool and serve with vanilla ice cream.

This was an absolutely wonderful dessert for a hot, hot summer day with no extra heat generated in our kitchen.

Here’s another solar cooking idea that is so easy I would feel guilty calling it a “recipe.”

Wash 4 or 5 potatoes. Put them in a covered pot. (Do not poke holes in them. It’s completely unnecessary. Poking holes doesn’t help them cook faster. Plus it encourages oxidation, so your potatoes will end up with a series of little black dots in them. This is the voice of experience speaking.) Peel and quarter one large or two small onions and distribute them throughout the potatoes. Peel and add 2 or three whole cloves of garlic (or more, if you adore garlic). Cover the pot and place in your solar cooker until dinner time.

The result, depending on your family size and level of hunger, can be two meals accompaniments. We usually have a couple potatoes for dinner. They are moist and roasty, never mushy, with a lovely hint of onion and garlic.

For breakfast the following morning, we have potato hash. The cold potatoes are firm enough for dicing into neat cubes that are easily browned in a little oil. (Note Jim’s safe and efficient chopping technique.) When they are nearly done, add the onions and any garlic that wasn’t smushed on bread and eaten the previous evening. The onions are unbelievably sweet and almost caramelized. With a couple eggs, this is a wonderful meal to start the day.

We are finally experiencing enough sunny days to make solar cooking fun again.

A couple of weeks ago, I experimented with making cornbread in the solar cooker. I used a Jiffy mix, which is pretty good to start, although not as good as my slightly more involved from scratch recipe. It is, however, mighty quick. Just stir it up, pop it in the solar oven for 6 or so hours, cut and enjoy.

There were a few problems with the resultant cornbread. One was that one side of the round loaf was more “done” than the other. I made a note to rotate the pan in the future, at the same time as I adjusted the cooker to get more sun. The other was that the cornbread was just a little dull.

When I made cornbread yesterday, I reminded myself to turn the pan as well as the cooker. I also added 4 pickled jalapenoes to the batter. That made a wonderful difference. Spicy cornbread isn’t a favorite for everyone in our house, but Jim and I enjoyed it.

After a week of disappointingly cloudy and rainy and/or cold days, today was absolutely glorious. The sky was clear and blue; the sun shone brightly all day long.

It was an inspiring day for working in the garden and for solar cooking. Since my cupboard was bare of easy short-cut baking mixes, I had a look around a great site for solar cooking, specifically the recipe wiki part of the site. The desserts, as usual, caught my eye and I decided to try the recipe for solar baked brownies. The recipe called for ingredients I had in my kitchen– another sign. I adjusted the baking time from “one hour”, surely California standards, to my usual Michigan “as long as it’s sunny” period. Again, you can’t burn food when solar cooking so go for it.

These solar baked brownies were a hit. They were utterly delicious and close to my ideal of chewy brownies. The ease of preparation was another big plus. We’ll be making them again soon.