Cooking with the sun

Added 2023-05-13 16:01:51 +0000 UTC

In March 2023 we got our hands on a solar evacuated tube, which is an all-glass double-tube co-axial structure originally designed for heating water from solar, typically installed on the rooftops of houses. These tubes can harness the sun's energy to heat bath water, but they can also be useful to heat and cook food.

In short, solar evacuated tubes are like a well-designed thermos, in which heat comes in, and stays in.

The sun is a source of inexhaustible "fuel", but requires that we follow its schedule, and position in the sky to cook food. How fast the food is cooked depends on how much sun there is that day, and what is being cooked.

We've been experimenting regularly with our tube since. So far, we cooked chickpeas(soaked, from dry), potatoes, various vegetables, rice, seitan, and even small baguettes! Being able to bake bread was one of the main reasons why we decided to get a tube like this.

We will be experimenting more with it this summer. We're very excited, because this will help us cut down on fuel(LPG) consumption, and it means we can bake more often(we stopped baking a few years ago because of how much fuel is required).

Read more on solar evacuated tube cooking(includes cooking log) and on solar cooking.