All Season Solar Cooker (17.0) : Patio, Lawn & Garden

Cooks like a crockpot on sunny winter days.Waiting for summer heat to see how amazing it can be. Must have oven bag or clear pyrex bowls to trap heat.

Like many, I was astonished at how well this lightweight contraption cooks food. (in February, no less!)It cooks food in the morning, in the evening, in the winter, and at more reasonable times of sunlight too. I have adjusted the cooker as suggested to achieve a three-hour cooking window, placed a pan of chicken in it, and left at 1:00 p.m. to go back to work. I came home at 5:00 p.m. to well-cooked chicken, still warm.The design lends itself to so many adjustments that it is possible to capture maximum solar energy at any time of the day or year. Of course, adjusting it frequently will achieve the most cooking energy, but setting it ahead of the sun and leaving it for a 2-3 hour period has worked well enough for me.I most like the ingenuity of this cooker. It’s pretty incredible that through intelligent design, plastic board and a shiny surface can be transformed to meet a universal human need–cooking food. It seems like that, with just a few uses, it can be considered a climate change gain. I would love to see this cooker distributed to areas of the world where women have no choice but to cook over open fires.This cooker is not an insulated oven, however, and I think some people have that expectation. There are ovens out there, and they are good, too, but they are not very portable. They are bigger than a suitcase and fairly heavy. I find that the turkey bag and the double bowl set-up does a fairly good job of retaining heat and creating an oven-like environment. It’s a trade-off, but to be able to fold this down to an inch-thick and easily store it is worth it!As for the size, well, are you really sure that you want the large one? All the YouTube videos I watched were of the smaller one (on the right in the second photo). The larger one is the only one that is being sold now, and that’s what I ordered, not realizing the distinction. (It is clearly stated that this a new, larger cooker, so it was my mistake.) I contacted the manufacturer because, aside from other issues, I couldn’t get the large one through my 22-inch door, short of disassembling it each time. I suspect that RVers may have narrow doors, as well, and this might be an issue, in terms of just getting it out of the rain, or out of sight until the next day. I purchased the smaller one which, as you can see in the third photo, I can, with a little scrunching, get through my door. (I have a friend who wants the larger one, so its all good for me.)What I found, though, by having both of them for awhile, was that the smaller cooker is more maneuverable and more ‘human-sized”. The larger cooker is harder to adjust. Forget the wing nuts, use chip clips, but even then, it’s not as easy. It’s not because it is badly designed, it’s because you can’t make human arms longer. It’s just harder to hover over the top of the larger one and reach everything. The larger one also doesn’t have quite as much of a stable non-moving base. This increase in size does have some trade-offs, but, apparently, everyone wants the larger size and immediately started choosing it over the smaller size.For me, however, the smaller size, with a 12 x 12-inch cooking space works quite well. I would so rarely need to use the 12 x 17-inch cooking space that the slightly increased awkwardness of adjusting it and hauling it around isn’t worth it. So, if you want the smaller size, you will need to contact the manufacturer. He said he has about 100 (well, 99, since I bought one) left.Overall, both of these cookers are really phenomenal. They are intriguing, fun to use, and reasonably priced.

I like it because I can use it to cook a meal using the sun and not heat up my kitchen. I would LOVE it if I could use my huge turkey roaster as the ‘oven’ part to actually cook a family meal rather than relying on it to only be large enough to hold 9″ stir fry cast iron as my ‘oven’. I don’t like having to rely on nylon bags to contain the heat, I would much rather use something non-disposable and full of chemicals to surround my food. So, I will continue to just use very, very small cast iron dishes to cook a few things… but it would be AMAZING if it were larger. :)**Update one year later… I do still like and do use my all season solar cooker camper and increased the stars based on the usability. I did see that the seller did respond to my comment (which was so fantastic!) and he suggested a rectangle roaster. I do have one and I did try it but it didn’t really work for me.. that is ok though. I am using a Lodge 5qt double Dutch oven quite successfully and not needing a nylon bag. I just use it in my back yard and it works perfectly! I do highly recommend and it is quite easy to use. First photo is from last year using two small Lodge woks to roast a chicken with just dry rub added. Yum. Give it a try, I think you will appreciate the ability to not use utilities and to avoid heating your home in the warm months…. and also, it’s just fun.

Well made, yes, corrugated plastic but truly, it’s the perfect material because it is quite sturdy, versatile and light weight. I can tell that much thought was put into the design for ease of use and solar effectiveness. When assembling, I didn’t have any trouble except that the instructions were a bit scattered but eventually understandable. I have not been able to cook in it yet but will leave a more detailed review when the sun decides to return to the midwest!

When our solar oven arrived it had some nice surprises with it, i.e. a handful of the extra large cooking bags and a large ‘trivet.’ The trivet is actually like a cooling rack and it fits the entire bottom surface to accommodate 2 pans at a time. The rack will also be nice for dehydrating foods, which I love to do. The first thing we cooked was a Cornish hen & carrots in one pot, and rice in the other pot. We readjusted the oven every 30 minutes toward the sun and removed the food after 3 1/2 hours. It might have been a little over-cooked, and we could have removed it an hour earlier. We live in the NW on the Puget Sound in Washington State. It’s July and the sun is perfect for cooking on our town home back patio. It was a warm day and we didn’t have to use the kitchen oven! Also, this would be perfect in case of an electrical blackout (as long as there is sun). We are in love with this oven. It’s so easy to use… and fairly easy to put together (just be sure to follow the instructions; watching on YouTube also helped). Ha – we had a couple neighbors come over to see what it was we had outside and what we were doing. They were impressed. I would buy this again.