Glad it was helpful, SootyS

Thanks, Cafe Sizun. Glad it was useful.

Thanks, Catalin! I agree.

Yes... I have been working towards being offgrid. There are so many solar items available eg lighting, power stations, showers, cookers etc. Also friction torches, lanterns, radios etc. In Australia we have tools and appliances that come with a 18 volt rechargeable battery. One brand has 100 items that can be charged and used using the same type battery. I have 18 volt lanterns, torches, saw, lawnmower, edge cutter, radio and a fan but here is the exciting part. I now bank free electricity using my solar panel / powerbank during the day to charge all my batteries that come with the tools. I have my lighting sorted, also fan, radio, mowing, showering and cooking. There are many other items I keep adding to save energy bills like a kelly kettle which I have just purchased. Look online particularly camping and survival gear sites for items and inspiration. Cheers.

@@janetbransdon3742it would be nice to see on the video all your solars equipment

Thanks, LL. Glad it was useful.

Glad you like it, Pascal.

Hi Vitality, the bottom part is from a junked 'halogen cooker' (Google that to see an example). They were popular about twenty years ago, so there are now many at the end of their useful lives, and you could probably get one that is being thrown away if you look around. There are two sizes, 12 litre, like this one, and a smaller 7 litre model. The glass top was bought new - it's a standard borosilicate glass lid that some people use on frying pans or large pans. This combination makes a nice big heat trap, as described.

Thanks, SubGar, glad you liked it.

Thanks, Linh. Chosen here to represent the four most common types of solar cooker.

Thanks Matt! Glad you like it.

Thanks, Susan. Glad you like it.

Grazie, lieto che ti piaccia

Glad you like it, Steve. Is your reflector from GreenPowerScience?

@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight Yes it is. GPS got me interested first. I have some videos posted on my page. Have a great day.

Thanks!!

Thanks, truth_

You are welcome

Thanks, Arun. Glad you liked it.

Thanks Enjoy! Yes, you are right about the thin (I think they are called 'Speckleware') enamelled pots. They work best in low-powered panel cookers because they do not have much thermal mass, so you don't waste much energy heating them up. Cast iron pots take a lot of heating, and you have to do that before the food heats up, so they only work well in more powerful solar cookers, like parabolics. Be careful about smaller pots, though. If you are using a reflector with flat sections, like the one at the beginning of the video, unless the flat sections are the same size as the pot, some of the reflected light will miss the pot. The panel cooker I come to in the video straight after constructing the example cooker has a curved reflector at the back, and this helps because almost all of the light is reflected onto the pot, however small. If you are interested in pursuing your interest in solar cooking, there are a number of Facebook Groups dedicated to it. You could consider joining one or more of them.

Thank you, Sandra. Glad you liked it. There are quite a lot of simple solar cooker designs around - check out the Copenhagen, for example. Solar Cookers International run a Wiki that contains just about everything there is to know about solar cookers. You can find it here: solarcooking.fandom.com/wiki/Solar_Cooking_Wiki_(Home)

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight I appreciate you takinG time to get bacK to me DaVe!👍With so many people experiencing Power Ourages...haVinG a waRm cuppa seems so niCe to enjoy through a rough patCh!✌😍🌹🌞🌹☕🍵☕

Thanks, Marcel

Thanks, Mike

Hi StarWish, Yes, you need oven gloves. In the set up you see in the video, I find that if I remove the pot lid, I can hold the top edge of both sides of the pot between thumb and fingers, wearing silicone oven gloves like these: www.yaoteo.com/products/acronde-2-pairs-mini-oven-gloves-silicone-heat-resistant-cooking-pinch-mitts-potholder-for-kitchen-cooking-baking-red-and-blue-1 I got mine on ebay UK, not this brand.

thank you, Stib

Thanks!

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight I've already told 2 people about how amazing your video is.

Thanks again!

Thanks, Emma, glad you found them useful. Most of the (expensive) commercially made solar cookers on the market use anodised aluminium reflectors - definitely the best, but eye-wateringly expensive. Mirror on a roll is almost as good, and a fraction of the price. If you are going the DIY route, by far the simplest-but-still-effective cooker to build is the Copenhagen, invented by Sharon Clausson. There are a couple of good KZfaq vids that show you how to make one.

@Dave Oxford thank you for the swift reply. the Copenhagen is going to be my first attempt. I am also going to have a go at the slanted box type. given our place in the world, would painting the inside of the box black help with raising the cooking temperature, or should I just leave the base black and do the rest reflective? I know the pots have to be black and insulated. sorry for the numerous questions. this is my new hyperfocus. (cooking for next to nothing)

Hi Emma. Regarding the box cooker you aim to build, you should make the sides (of the inside of the box) reflective, but the bottom (of the inside of the box) black, or place a thin black metal tray there on the bottom, like an oven tray. You are trying to get the maximum amount of sunlight to hit your black pot, and the rays that miss the pot will get absorbed by the bottom tray. Not sure what you mean when you say that the 'pots have to be black and insulated'. Black, yes, better if matt black than shiny black. If by insulated you mean that you need a glass heat trap, then yes, but if you are using a box oven cooker, it is the sides of the box that need to be insulated. In the Copenhagen, you need a clear (maybe plastic, but preferably pyrex type glass) heat trap surrounding but not touching the black pot. I know that you have recently joined Solar Cooking UK (because I am an admin) and your questions could be better answered there, because we can show pictures to illustrate what we mean. Good luck with your builds.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlighthelpful answers! I had the same questions.

Thanks, John! Yes, as you say, parabolic reflectors are designed to reflect all of the sunlight that strikes them onto a single focal point. There is an important difference between shallow parabolic reflectors, and deep parabolic reflectors, and that will be tackled in a future video. Essentially, deep parabolic reflectors are kinder to your cookware, and need to be re-aligned less frequently - two advantages (usually) of the deeper parabola.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight first time hearing deep vs shallow and I've watched like 20-30 solar cooker vids.

Thank you, Narayan.

Hi Bethel. It's great that you tried DIY solar cooking. I hope you are not so disappointed that you gave up. I'm not sure how much sun you get in the area where you live, but it is possible to solar cook most places on the globe in your summer. This coming year, I will be producing a video all about making a DIY cooker from cheap materials that will work (i.e. boil a litre of water, or cook a kilo of food) in a couple of hours in the summer in the UK. If you are closer to the equator than 50 degrees, this will work for you in your summer.

Hi Baran, glad you are using solar cookers. I'm a bit surprised to hear 105 C. Do you mean you got the air in an empty pot up to 105 C? The usual test is to see whether you can boil a litre of water. If you can boil a litre of water in one of these 'cube corner' setups at 48N in October, I'd be impressed. Please let me know.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight hello Dave, I was cooking oatmeal with coconut milk yesterday. Black pot with black lid, sitting on 3 small pebbles, covered with a glass salad bowl upside down. The pot is the shallower but larger diameter variety, almost like a deep pan, to increase the heating area. The backside mirrors were at a 90 degree angle. I had an oven thermometer sitting on top of the lid under the glass bowl. It showed 105 C around 13:00. Since this is a slow cooker, I had it out for 2 hours or so in total and the oatmeal cooked soft. I did rice in it prior to the oatmeal and the rice got overdone, it became mushy soft. I forgot to rinse it with warm water before cooking and left it out longer than I should have. I used hot tap water for starters both times, less time wasted for the initial heat up of the pot. So this simple three panel cooker is very efficient. Open box solar cooker is the other name for it. Easiest one I made so far. It's sunny today too, I'm doing cornmeal today in the same setup 🙂 11:47 local time and the thermometer is showing 110 C. Sunny day.

@Baran Jan - thanks for the description. There are a few solar cooking Facebook Group pages you could join, if you do Facebook. The one we run for the UK is called 'solar cooking UK'. It would be great to have some pictures of your setup. Always looking for recipes and experiences.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight - unfortunately I don't have a FB account but next time I use this cooker I'll make a video and load it up to youtube.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i5-HiNGis5qVnqM.html I made and uploaded the video today, the cooker performed as expected but I messed up the recipe badly, LOL. Not the cooker's fault though.

Thanks, Lion.

Hi Malik, They all work, some fast, some slow. I depends on what you want to cook. Here is a good video that will introduce you to each type of solar cooker. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i9l2pbubsqeUYYE.html&ab_channel=RogerHaines If you have more questions, please ask.

I guess you didn't watch until the end, Tanner.

Hi David. The heat trap dish you see me tap in the video is a 12 litre bowl from a halogen cooker. If you Google halogen cooker you will see the type of cooker I mean. It has an electric heating element in the lid. Many of these are now coming to the ends of their useful lives, and are just junked. You can buy a new replacement bowl for them (search on Amazon) for £18-£25 delivered. But if you search on Marketplace, or Trash Nothing or Freecycle or Gumtree you will often find them for free, or for very little money, though then you will have to go and pick them up. The lids - of borosilicate / pyrex glass are available new from Amazon for around £15. You can see another video of mine about heat traps if you search on YT. Good luck in your search.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight My very grateful thanks - I see there is a 17 litre option also …

@@davideddy2672 The 17 litre version you see advertised is achieved by adding a stainless steel extension ring to the 12 litre glass version already discussed, so that is not an option for a 17 litre heat trap (as light won't get through the steel). But there IS a smaller, 7 litre version of the halogen cooker. They are not so common, but they do come up now and then.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight - I happened to watch a KZfaq of you making bread in the midst of a Cornish winter last night, impressive stuff! I’m based in North Cornwall 😊 Ironically, I also appreciate the scythe as the weapon of choice 😁 👍

I'm out to prove that solar cooking is possible this far above the equator, David. I find that most people in the UK have not even heard of solar cookers. Even if they have, they usually believe that they will only work in 'hot countries'. Of course, you will need a high tech evacuated tube to stand a chance in the winter, but in the summer, you can cook with a panel cooker. Lots more videos coming up next year when we get a bit more sun If you are interested in solar cooking and you do Facebook, you could consider joining the Solar Cooking UK FB Group - all the information you can eat.

Thanks, Matt. The food container would need to be sealed as well if you pulled a vacuum inside the glass, or it would lower the boiling point and any volatile components of the food would end up condensed on the inside of the glass - yuck. However, this has been tried with some limited success (not by me). But the existing evacuated cooking tubes (the one with the bread inside in the vid) already make full use of the insulating qualities of a vacuum. And there is now proto-type double skinned hemispherical vacuum shaped glassware that works really well. Much more convenient shape than the current tubes. Not on the market, yet, but just a matter of time.

Grazie, MrCrasch.

Had to look up 'detritivore'. The simple three mirror device you see at the beginning of the video will top out at around 85C, with that heat trap setup, Fusion. If you want the temperature to get up to boiling, the simplest design that will reliably do that would be the 'Copenhagen', designed by Sharon Clausson - plenty of DIY vids on YT that show you how to make one. When not in use, it's flat, so could be hung on a shed or garage wall. You would still need the heat trap arrangement you see in the video. I thought I knew about all the possible solar cooker applications, but heating up food for detritivores is another to add to my list.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight Oh cool, I see you did other videos, I subscribed and going to watch them also.

Thanks, Fusion. More to come this summer when I get my finger out.

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight hahahahaha. I heard leaving comments helps videos reach more audiences, so it's my way to trying to contribute something back to show my appreciation.

Thanks.

Hello

नमस्ते, वंदना। मेरी वीडियो देखने के लिए धन्यवाद। आप यहां जाकर हिंदी उप-शीर्षक प्राप्त कर सकते हैं: सेटिंग्स / उपशीर्षक / ऑटो-अनुवाद / हिंदी namaste, vandana. meree veediyo dekhane ke lie dhanyavaad. aap yahaan jaakar hindee up-sheershak praapt kar sakate hain: setings / upasheershak / oto-anuvaad / hindee

@@DaveOxfordCookingWithStarlight nice one :)

Thanks, agarjaverbar