21
votes
Solar oven/cooking
For context, I live in the tropics and get a lot of sunlight for most of the year outside of monsoon season.
I was recently chatting with some coworkers and one of the mentioned baking cookies on their dashboard during the summer, and I remember my brother mentioning doing that when he lived in Arizona. That is something I could probably do here, but we always keep a sunshade up in our car so it isn't incredibly hot when we get inside.
This got me thinking about solar ovens since I remember seeing a video of someone using one to cook online awhile ago, and I was curious if anyone here has one or has any experience using one and if it was worth it or if they would have any recommendations.
I made one once with a pizza box, aluminum foil, plastic wrap and black construction paper. We were able to warm up some chili and hot dogs (in summer in New England). I definitely think you could do some actual cooking with one where you're at.
My mother has one like this, in sunny California. It works fine but you have to turn it a couple of times to keep the best angle between the sun and the aluminum reflector so the light/heat consistently hits what you are cooking.
Modernist Cuisine presents: Cooler Steak
If not powerful enough, take some inspiration from the Mont-Louis Solar Furnace (IEEE) and make a miniature home version for instant cooking
In all seriousness, I would try a cookie bake for sure. A cooler and some foil in the sun should do it. My area is more suited for outdoor freeze drying....
I've never seen a Cool Steak so thank you for sharing that! Seems like fun and I may just give it a try sometime!
I'm hoping if we moved back to our old place we're renting out or settle down in this area we can get some solar panels as I can only image they would pay for themselves before too long with the amount of sun we get in the area.
Depending on your needs, a solar vacuum tube oven might work. There’s a good summary of them here https://100r.co/site/solar_evacuated_tube_cooking.html
(The rest of that website is well worth checking out too)
I think I saw something similar in the video I watched where someone was using this.
That could definitely work since it isn't very large and I could just set it on my driveway and then pick it up later.
I've seen YouTube videos of people using really big fresnel lenses to focus sunlight similar to a magnifying glass but on a larger scale and they get hot enough as to be quite dangerous and even melt metal. I imagine you could use it to heat a metal box and have a rudimentary oven, or heat a pot to boil water, or possibly even cook something like a steak directly.
I've seen some of those as well, the sun is no joke!
I was leaning more towards a premade one that I could easily store if needed, but I may look at doing something myself.
Since I work from home having something like this would be handy since I'm thinking I could set it up and let it cook in the later morning/afternoon when we get a lot of sun on the front of where we're staying.
I remember when I was a kid in my father's electronics repair shop, we would take the screens from rear projection TVs and put them out in the sun. Fun fact about them: they're actually linear fresnel lenses that are used to redirect the side-pointing light towards the viewer. I actually learned recently that linear fresnel lenses were also used in some early LCD panels before the time of LED backlighting.
Did you ever burn yourself accidentally? The rear-projection lenses are nice and big and some of the stronger ones I understand.
Not really.
This site has good articles about it: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
I was looking for this article in particular https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/10/how-to-build-a-solar-powered-electric-oven/
Thanks for sharing. I've not seen Low Tech Magazine before so I'll be coming back to read some more articles.
I have a GoSun Fusion and use it to roast dinner sometimes (usually a pork tenderloin, it fits well in the tube). It works really well! I keep meaning to experiment with it more often.
That looks awesome!
I think my wife wouldn't appreciate the price tag and I would need to use it every day for a long while before it would pay for itself in terms of energy cost, but definitely saving this for a maybe one day as that would be super handy, also the ability to use it with electricity if needed would be cool, and it seems to fold down to a very easily manageable size. We could also use that at the beach here instead of needing to bring along a portable grill.