America’s Test Kitchen TV
Season 9, Episode 24: Weeknight Summer Supper
Snippet: Testing Solar Cookers
Christopher Kimball: Here in the Test Kitchen, we’re not inclined to go with culinary fads, but we had heard of solar ovens for years, and we had a simple question: Do they really work? [Flails arms in emphasis] Can you do a chicken? Do you bake cookies? Does it have to be sunny out? So all of those questions we’re going to get answered. [Turns to Adam Ried] And we actually went up to the roof of the Test Kitchen to find out whether solar ovens will cook.
Adam Ried: America’s Test Kitchen takes to the friendly skies! We tested three different solar ovens, of which we have two here. [Camera zooms in on first oven] This is the SOS Sport Oven [camera pans to second oven], this is the Sun Oven. And you can see the construction’s a little different. The Sun Oven has a glass door that shuts like that [shuts glass door], and it’s got these reflectors all around it to catch more of the light from the sun and heat it up to a higher temperature. We got this oven to go up to 350 degrees.
CPK: [Raises eyebrows, looks impressed] That’s pretty high.
AR: [Agreeing] Which was pretty high. [Turns to second oven] This one doesn’t have the reflectors. It’s got a little bit of insulation here, right on the cover. It’s got insulation in the walls and the floor of it. And it didn’t get quite as hot. The SOS Sport got to 250 degrees. So as you said in the introduction, and you can see in this clip, [overlay video of solar cooker on Test Kitchen roof] I was up on the roof. It’s the only place in Boston where we’re going to get enough bright sunlight. And that’s really what these depend on. Not the heat of the sun, but the ultra-violet rays—which is how bright the sun is. You want an ultra-violet index of seven or above, and you definitely want the sun 45 degrees or more above the horizon line to be able to cook in these.
CPK: Well, just so I understand, so the U.V. index will go all the way up to, what? 11 or 12?
AR: [Nodding] Right.
CPK: That would be the top end.
AR: 11 or 12.
CPK: Okay.
AR: Now, [overlay video of different food tests] we tried chicken, we tried rice, we tried broccoli, we tried cookies. Also, we tried soups and stews. You can think of these as environmental slow-cookers. They perform better with foods that have a lot of natural moisture that can withstand fluctuations in temperature. Because with this one, for instance [motions to first solar cooker], when a cloud passed by, the temperature would drop. So the chicken was all right [overlay video of slicing into solar cooked chicken]. The broccoli didn’t so that well [overlay video of a forkful of the solar-cooked broccoli], the rice didn’t do that well [overlay video of a spoonful of the solar-cooked rice], and the cookies were fine [overlay video of cooling solar-cooked cookies]. I was happy to eat the cookies on the roof. So you know, these are works in progress. They’re not something that’s going to replace our Test Kitchen oven. But they don’t weigh that much—this one is ten pounds [motions to second solar cooker], this one’s a little more than 20 [motions to first solar cooker]. You can bring them camping, you can bring them on a canoe trip. Actually, people who live in very sunny, hot climates might want to use these by setting them up in the back and cooking something during the day when the sun is bright, without heating up their kitchen. And people who have environmental concerns, or don’t want to pay the cost of fuel, can use these to good effect, also, as long as they have a lot of bright sun and enough time.
CPK: So the answer to the question is, do they work? Yeah, kind of. They’re a work in progress. They are solar slow-cookers; and the two models we tested were?
AR: This was the Sun Oven, and it was $200. This one is the SOS Sport Solar Cooker, and it was $140.
CPK: And we’re going to save them for Al Gore, if he wants to stop by the Kitchen and pick them up. [AR laughs]
View the full report of our Solar Cookers testing.
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH
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Great show! Sorry I missed it. It would have been great to have you test a few more solar cookers like the low cost cardboard and aluminum foil solar CooKits that are being manufactured by Darfur refugee women in four camps in Eastern Chad in a project sponsored by Jewish World Watch. More than 50,000 of these have been distributed to refugee families, allowing them to cook two meals a day with solar energy. The food in a CooKit reaches 250F. Another type of solar cooker is the parabolic model. It looks like a small satellite dish with a wire stand to hold your cooking pot at the focal point. Parabolic solar cookers can reach combustion temperatures instantly. They can boil a pot of water (or rice), fry an egg or pop popcorn as fast as a gas burner or an open fire. More than a million parabolic solar cookers are being used by families in China and India. Parabolic solar cookers work even in freezing weather as long as the sky is clear. Check out my youtube channel ‘solarwindmama’ with short videos on solar cooking in Africa, Afghanistan, in the snow in my backyard in Virginia, in Nepal and on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Also check out “Farishta” the novel I wrote after spending a year (2005) in northern Afghanistan with a British Army infantry unit–solar cooking is one of the subplots.
Patricia McArdle
http://www.patriciamcardle.com
p.s. The SOS Sport solar box cooker does come with reflectors. I have used one in Arlington and in the mountains of Afghanistan and can easily get it up to 350F. The more insulated Sun Oven allowed me to cook a pot of chicken soup during a three-day power outage when the DC area was blasted with snow in 2010. Chef Jose Andres had a similar experience that winter. Check out his very enthusiastic you tube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?)v=HKpd1Mu4Edk) Since he had his solar cooker epiphany during Washington DC’s 2010 snowmageddon, Jose Andres has raised funds to send parabolic solar cookers to Haiti and has gone there himself to teach Haitians how to cook with the sun. You should get him on your show.
Here’s the correct url for the you tube video that shows Chef Jose Andres cooking for the first time with a parabolic solar cooker in the snow near Washington DC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKpd1Mu4Edk
Chris & Adam,
Thank you for thinking solar as in solar cooking! Having read your comments I believe they are typical of solar oven users in the USA. When the UV index is high solar ovens work, and in the third world with tons of sun they work. The handicap that solar ovens have and will always have is “No Sun, No Fun, Cold food”.
Solar cooking technology has evolved greatly over the past seven years so that the best features of the solar cooking oven and the reliability of the household kitchen oven are now joined into one convenient high performance solar electric oven. There is no dramatic temperature drop offs when clouds cut off the sun’s solar power as the solar electric oven’s electric back will turn itself on and continue cooking your food as if the food was in your own kitchen oven.
Just introduced this year the SunFocus solar electric oven is our newest oven and is the only American made solar electric oven manufactured in the USA. The only other solar electric oven sold in America is the Indian manufactured Tulsi-Hybrid solar oven. Both of these solar electric ovens are exclusive to the Sun BD Corporation, Waterloo, New York.
http://www.sunbdcorp.com
http://www.Tulsi-HybridUSA.com
Peas and Carrots …to quote Tom Hanks in Forest Gump. Now think solar and electric. Good things just to go together.
Respectfully submitted,
David Chalker
President – Sun BD Corporation