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50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Oven of the Future, September 3, 2005
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.
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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Works Well But Follow Setup Instructions Carefully, March 16, 2008
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!
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Energy Free, August 24, 2006
I bought the cooker for a recreational farm I go to on weekends, but I tried it out first at a family member's house. I cooked a 4# chicken with carrots that was incredibly delicious. The chicken cooked down to the bone but stayed juicy. The next day I cooked steak tacos;...delicious, and in the same day cooked my nephew's birthday cake. That was the topper. My family members where so impressed they requested I leave the cooker behind. Now I have to send them a solar oven. Oh, and I cooked all that without disturbing the air conditioning in the house.
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