I thought I would start a discussion with others who use low or no energy cooking methods. 40° C / 104° F where I live this week (France) so other than saving energy and money, it’s great to get the cooking done mostly outside to avoid heating the house more than necessary !
At our house we have a homemade Solar oven and a homemade AND artisan made Rocket stove.
Lets share ideas and recipes !
Add images here
Very cool.
Yes, I’m in Arizona and I was researching solar ovens. I didn’t try to build one this year.
I did build a “rocket stove” as I have a lot of scrap Mesquite wood from a large tree in my yard. The small limb wood is perfect for the rocket stove.
I have mentioned before that we have a commercial solar oven that looks a lot like yours, and if I want to get temps much higher than 325F, I have to fiddle with it and adjust it to face the sun about every 10 minutes. More frequently if I want to get closer to 400F. It’s kind of nice to have, but it’s far from a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of thing. I’ve seen solar powered motors that track the sun and adjust automatically, and they’re pretty cool, but I’m not ready to make that leap yet.
Thing of beauty! I just have the single burner variety. I use it all year. In summer, it makes it so I don’t heat up the house. In winter it helps heat me. I had the cinder variety, then saw a steel one on Amazon for $25, so I got that, now. Nice thing about blocks, though, is that you can assemble or disassemble in minutes. With cinder blocks, it seems you get more cooking area, too. Most commercially made ones don’t have much of an escape hole for a cooking surface.
Have you cooked on it?
Yes… I’ve mainly done hamburgers and hot dogs.
I did try a vegetable fried rice in my Lodge Cast Iron skillet, which turned out pretty good. (I had some leftover rice in the fridge). I imagine I could fry just about anything in the Lodge, just watch how much heat I introduce.
There was a bit of a learning curve, as it really puts out some heat – I learned to slowly add small pieces of wood and not start out with too much. Apparently, the word “rocket” was somehow lost on me.
LOL, yes, the YT I watched the fire was screaming hot. Seems like a fun project though.
Yes… Sunshine loves her hamburgers/hot dogs/brats cooked over the Mesquite wood.
I have an overabundance of small mesquite wood from the large tree in my yard. When I trim it, I save anything larger than my thumb, dry it then use it for cooking or the fireplace (during the winter).
The Rocket Stove was easy to make, as I watched a instructional youtube video. I made the necessary cuts to the center cinder block with tile blade in my angle grinder.
