Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Cooking Green Is Getting Easier

Cooking Green Is Getting Easier

By Leslie Foster

Rating: ***

This article is a good read for anyone who enjoys cooking outdoors, and who enjoys doing better things for the environment.

A solar oven is pretty easy to make and they don't need too many materials either. They are much better for the environment than cooking over a fire or using a portable stove. The first step to making a solar oven is to gather all the materials - two cardboard boxes, one slightly larger than the other, more cardboard, shredded paper, duct tape, aluminum foil, an oven bag, plastic wrap, black construction paper, and white glue. All you need to do is line the smaller box with black paper and put it inside the big one, insulate it with the shredded paper. Then, make a reflector funnel by cutting the extra cardboard into four trapezoids, line the inside with the foil, and assemble them together to form a prism. Then, line the bottom of the prism with plastic wrap and the oven bag. The reflection through this prism from the sun is supposed to be able to be aimed into the smaller box and should be able to cook simple foods such as a baked potato. More elaborate recipes could require a cooking pot of some sort placed inside the smaller box.

This is an informative article on a new way to cook food in the outdoors. However, I do see a few problems with this cooker. First of all, you can only use it if the sun is shining strongly. So, it couldn't be used on an overcast day or if your campsite is shaded by trees, or any other obstructions. Secondly, the article says that it take one hour to simply heat up. I guess if you had a lot of time on your hands that wouldn't matter, but if you're on a hiking trip or canoeing trip you might not have an hour to wait for your oven to heat up, especially if you're losing daylight so the oven might not even heat up anyways. I'm kind of interested in trying to build this oven and seeing if it can actually heat up enough to cook something. I gave this article 3 stars since it's still very informative on how to build this oven as that's what the article was written for, the oven just doesn't seen like a viable replacement for cooking on a trip.

I would recommend this article to anyone looking for a new way to cook their food outdoors, but have a lot of time to do so.

Foster, Leslie. "Cooking Green is Getting Easier." Ottawa Outdoors Spring 2014: 20. Print.

1 comment:

  1. You had me hooked, I was planning a new assignment in class, but then you gave me the reality. Great job.

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