Global Sun Oven - Solar Cooker Review

Global Sun Oven – Solar Cooker

21Zo7o4UEZL. SL160  Q&A: Looking for a solar cooker that is NOT a Global Sun Oven. Any suggestions?
  • 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


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.
buynow big Q&A: Looking for a solar cooker that is NOT a Global Sun Oven. Any suggestions?
List Price: $ 299.50
Price: $ 239.00


This Review is from: Global Sun Oven – Solar Cooker by SUN OVENS International, Inc.

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!


This Review is from: Global Sun Oven – Solar Cooker by SUN OVENS International, Inc.

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.

Friday, December 30, 2011

solar cooker

Solar cooker is a solar power heating device that uses the inexhaustible power readily available from the sun. This abundant energy from the sun is utilized by this heating device typically for the purpose of cooking, heating &amp sterilizing etc. Solar cooking is a form of outdoor cooking which is now becoming promoted to lessen usage of other exhaustible fuel which could end in the coming future.

A solar cooker is a straightforward heating device produced of a wooden box painted black. In order to concentrate the sunlight there is a reflective mirror of polished glass and a metalized film is placed usually to concentrate the light and heat from sun into a modest section of cooking area generating it far more distinct so that more amount of heat can be utilized. Thereby the heating power of the device increases. The next step mainly focuses on conversion of the light energy of the sun into a usable form of heat.

The absorption of the light is mainly converted into heat by a black surface on a food container or the inside surface of this device. This improves efficiency of the device. The next step entails the trapping of the heat energy. It is quite essential to reduce the convention by isolating air inside the device to make it far more efficient and functional throughout cold days. Due to the greenhouse impact the infrared thermal radiation can be prevented from escaping 7 due to this the heat trapping effect can be conveniently amplified.

For the formation of this heating device different heat principles like heat gain, heat loss &amp heat storage ought to be completely understood. Heat acquire is normally available in three main types like the greenhouse impact, glass orientation and placement and with the reflectors that are placed for additional acquire.

Heat loss happens by any one of the following ways like conduction, radiation &amp convection. Heat storage mainly depends on the density and weight of supplies involved. With this we can judge the capacity of this heating device as well.

The solar cookers are mainly of three kinds the box cookers, the curved concentrator cookers and the panel cookers. The box cookers can cook from moderate to high temperatures and these are the most widely employed range used more than the world with a numerous thousand in India. The curved concentrator cookers also called as the parabolic cook rapidly at high temperatures but they require frequent adjustment for much better functioning and secure productivity. The panel cookers are in fact a mixture of both of the above devices that is the box cooker ant the parabolic. They are comparatively simple and affordable to buy and use. The basic principle of these devices is mainly to convert sunlight into heat power and use it for cooking purpose to save fuel and other non renewable types of power.

The biggest benefit of solar cookers is that they are eco friendly, affordable and price productive. 1 can very easily let go the dependence on gas or electrical energy for cooking or heating purposes. They can even be utilized for grilling, roasting &amp baking purposes as properly. 1 of the key disadvantage of this heating device is uses the energy from the sun so it might turn out to be hard in winter months or rainy days when sunlight is not enough.

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