Global Sun Oven - Solar Cooker

by SUN OVENS International, Inc.

Product Features

• Rust-proof, highly polished, mirror-like anodized aluminum reflectors
• Sets up in minutes
• Lightweight with carry handle
• Easy temperature monitoring
• Will reach temps of 360 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 30 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B00286KQ1W
• Item model number: Global Sun Oven
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,546 in Home & Garden (See Top 100 in Home & Garden)

Product Description

The Global Sun Oven® is the world's most widely used solar oven. Solar cooking has been around for centuries, but up to now, not many people have had the opportunity to try cooking with the sun. Using the most advanced materials, the Sun Oven takes all the hassles out of solar cooking to create the ultimate solar appliance. The sun oven can be used in the winter as well as summer. It has been used very successfully at below zero conditions at a base camp on Mt. Everest. Measures 19" x 19" with an average depth of 11". The total weight is only 21 pounds. You can bake bread, make cookies, pizza, muffins, or anything you could prepare using a conventional oven. The Global Sun Oven® lets you harness the power of the sun to cook without fuel and is currently being used in over 126 countries around the world. Sundance Solar is proud to carry this high quality solar appliance that is designed to last a lifetime.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

96 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Works Well But Follow Setup Instructions Carefully, March 16, 2008

By 

Atticus Finch (Durham, NC USA) - See all my reviews

First use yesterday. Wash, DC area. Late winter, sunny. Ambient temp was high 50s to low 60s. Max temp of about 325, with the built-in thermometer showing 310 - 315 most of the 1.5 hours it was in use. Adapted a recipe from "Glorious One-Pot Meals" by Elizabeth Yarnell (available from Amazon) using an old one quart Pyrex dutch oven and doubling the cooking time.

The finished meal cooked up nicely. The original recipe called for 45 minutes @ 450 degrees. I'm an inexperienced cook, but interestingly, the lower temp and necessarily longer cooking time seemed to produce more liquid.

My one caveat is to follow the directions to pre-heat the oven and clean its interior well before your first use. The interior is plastic. I let the oven heat up a little, then ran a wet paper towel over everything. Off-gassing of the plastic that likely would have occurred had I followed the manufacturer's directions, instead occurred while my meal was cooking. Result was a slight plastic-y (and assuredly carcinogenic) taste in that first dish.

Good build quality, but clearly from a small factory. Not meant to be pejorative. In fact, I like the idea of the company being a small business, particularly in the U.S. However, we're used to perfect looking, assembly line manufactured, robotically assembled stuff and this isn't. The plastic shell appears to be custom fabricated. The other parts are off-the-shelf components that have been adapted for this use and clearly assembled by hand. Hence, you'll find exposed, untrimmed rivets and an entirely functional but somewhat roughly finished wooden frame to which the hardware is attached.

All in all, I like it and it's worth its purchase price -- generally between $240 and $300 depending on the retailer.

Pro:
Works as advertised. Good build quality. Easily maintained temps above 300 degrees.

Con:
Plastic interior -- SEE BELOW!

23 Augusst 2008 Update -- after reading the comments on my and others' reviews, have double-checked and the interior is in fact metal. Nevertheless, follow the instructions and pre-heat a time or two before first use to allow the interior paint to finish curing, off-gas, etc.

Enjoy! Good stuff!

92 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Oven of the Future, September 3, 2005

By 

Peter A. Farrell (San Mateo, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

My mother first sent me plans for a solar cooker when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya back in the 1900s, but being young and foolish, I preferred to walk an hour to town for kerosene to light my little stove. (Heck, I couldn't cook, anyway.)

Being much older and a little wiser, I finally woke up to the idea of solar cooking. A parent at the school I work at donated the money to buy a Sun Oven, and my science class fired it up yesterday. I had never cooked in a solar oven before, so I was fully expecting some initial failures, which would be disappointing but instructive. I figured if it could heat up water, we'd bake brownies. The kids (7th and 8th graders) were unusually motivated to see this thing work. Some boys who have never previously volunteered in class eagerly peeled off the protective coating from the reflectors. We set the box outside facing the sun, and it quickly heated up to almost 300 degrees. It easily passed the water heating test, so other students mixed together my favorite brownie recipe (from Baking Illustrated), and into the sun it went. An hour later it passed the toothpick test, so the students tucked into moist, delicious brownies at lunch! It exceeded our wildest expectations for our first solar cooking attempt!

Today I've been experimenting some more, and I've cooked some brown rice (I'll use less water next time), a small loaf of bread (nicely browned crust in one hour), corn on the cob (no water necessary!), and an encore of the brownies. Everything has turned out very well, and all it took was turning the box every half hour or so.

146 of 156 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Solar cooking rocks, but this oven stinks...!, June 10, 2008

By 

Aine Ni Cheallaigh (Beacon, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

I bought this oven over a year ago. Beware reviews written by people who are smitten with their new purchase. I was smitten too. I put it out there on the front lawn and it worked! It heated water, cooked food, everything came out great. It was magic. But then I began to notice that food that came out of the oven had a plastic kind of taste. Whatever the oven was lined with was contaminating the food with its smell...ugh! I cleaned and cleaned it, but nothing made it better. By the end of last summer, I was reduced to cooking everything in sealed mason jars to keep the smell off the food.

Then I visited my neighbor, the person who'd inspired me to get the oven in the first place. She showed me that the lining of hers was rotting and coming off. She said that the company had agreed to replace it. I was so disappointed. This was going to happen to all of them. I decided to hang onto mine and have asked a friend to replace the inner chamber with wood. I don't know if it's going to work or what, but I so enjoy solar cooking, I can't not try.

So please, try solar cooking. It's great. But not with this oven.