Saturday, October 3, 2009

Solar Roasted Carrots with Cardamon


No major solar cooking today. Just some baby carrots tossed with melted butter and ground cardamon then slow roasted in the Sun Oven. I was hoping they would brown but even after an hour at 350ยบ they were not changing color. I wound up leaving them in the oven all day, mostly because I went out for a quick errand thinking another half hour might do the trick. One errand lead to another and I didn't get back until 4 o'clock. By this time some of the carrots were brown, but they had also shriveled up and were more like carrot jerky than anything else.
Browning is probably one of the trickiest things about solar cooking. I know I've been successful in the past. I even went back to some of my previous posts just to be sure. My theory is that it has to do with the angle of the sun. It's still hot here, but the sun is much lower in the sky than during the summer months meaning that the Sun Oven needs to be focused accordingly. We've also had a high pollution warning in effect this week so that could be another factor. Whatever the case I think I'll stick to foods that don't need browning for the next few months.

2 comments:

  1. Down here in Tucson, our day started out pretty cloudy so I didn't put out the solar ovens. It cleared up later but we were so busy with other stuff, the opportunity slipped away.

    I very successfully over-browned some toast in the SunOven once. :)

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  2. Very impressive! We don't get enough sun here...perhaps in the summer? Looking forward to see what else you will cook up?

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