Sun oven

I experimented with my sun oven yesterday! A sun oven is a little box with foldout flaps that collect sun light and direct it into the box. The oven has, of course, a temperature gauge and needs to be preheated before use. So, it's just like an oven except it runs on solar power.

I decided to start easy because I've never used my sun oven before. I started with rice, just plain old rice. Since the oven won't burn anything, I thought my rice would be safe. Actually, I take that back; cookies do burn because they contain sugar and sugar burns if left in the oven for too long.

So this is what I did: I added 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water and 1 teaspoon of Himalayan crystal salt in a dark lidded pot. I then put the pot of rice in a preheated (250F) oven and cooked for 1 hr.

The experiment didn't work because not all of the water absorbed before 1 hr was up. I could have left the rice in there longer but it was getting late in the evening and the sun was getting weaker. We did want to eat fairly soon so I just finished the rice on the stove.

I wish I would've started sooner but my ideas are almost always last minute. I'll be trying my sun oven again, hopefully with better results. The sun wasn't out today but next time, I'll try to make some chocolate chip cookies or something equally delicious.