Emergency Solar Cooking

Emergency solar cooking in a natural disaster or power outage condition:

Having a solar oven available to you during power outages or natural disasters for emergency solar cooking is one of the best ways to prepare food without gas or electricity.

Whether you live in a warm climate or up north where there are freezing temperatures, a solar cooker during emergencies is invaluable to get your food cooked and your drinking water pasteurized.

Emergency Solar ovens are rarely mentioned in disaster relief or power outage websites. Here is an example of instructions from a Minnesota state run health website for a power outage:

http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/food/fs/powerout.htm

When there is a Power Outage
* Note the time the power outage begins.
* Discontinue all cooking operations.
* Do not place hot food in refrigerators or freezers, as this will rapidly raise the temperature inside the refrigerator or freezer and may make more food unusable.
* Discard food products that are in the process of being cooked, but which have not yet reached the final cooking temperature.
* Maintain hot potentially hazardous food at 140°F or above. Food that has reached final cooking temperature may be kept hot (140°F) by use of canned heat in chafing dishes.
* Use ice or/ice baths to rapidly cool small batches of hot food.

You can see from these instructions that the State of Minnesota is very concerned with your health, and rightfully so. Unfortunately, there is no mention of alternatives except using canned heat in chafing dishes. How about an emergency solar cooker for cooking?

The advice to stop all cooking operations may be a little premature, depending on conditions. If it is a sunny day, why not break out the solar oven and continue cooking (if you weren't using it already)?

Obviously, common sense rules the day. You won't be using a solar cooker at night or when it's too cloudy to get any direct sunlight.

Most folks have never been exposed to solar cooking, much less emergency solar cooking. So you're ahead of the game if you have ever used a solar oven. If not, it's fun to cook with the sun.

Since solar ovens can be used anytime you have sunlight*, even in extreme cold, why not use it when you don't have an emergency condition to get familiar with solar cooking? Solar cookers can cook just about anything that can be cooked in a conventional oven. Pastas and pizza bread needs more care, but basic bread loaves can be cooked with ease.

Emergency solar cooking with reflective panel cookers and box type solar ovens can reach temperatures from 200 degrees F to 450 degrees F, depending on the type that you own. Reflective panel and box types are the most common.

If your food is not cooked and needs to be thawed, that can also be done with an emergency solar cooker.

If you don't plan on using a solar cooker on a regular basis, why not consider having one as an emergency backup oven? You can read about the different types.

*Depending on the time of year and your geographic location. Northern latitudes may only have enough sunlight between 10am to 3pm during winter months. Other locations may have enough sunlight to cook by between 8am and 6pm.