After several days of rainy weather, we finally had a nice, sunny day. I had a packet of chicken tenders in the fridge, so I threw together a simple meal of carrots, potatoes, onions, chicken and seasonings. Everything went into a dark frying pan covered with a glass lid, and the whole thing inserted into a large oven bag. Before twist tying the bag around the pan's handle, I tucked the probe of my oven thermometer on top of the glass lid so I could see how hot the whole thing got.



The stick holds the sides of the oven open to maximize the amount of sunlight it can funnel. The temperature got up to about 226 degrees F for a few hours. As you can see, the chicken browned pretty nicely.

This will be our dinner tomorrow morning (The Man works graveyards so we have dinner at around 7am) but I couldn't resist sneaking a taste. The chicken is a bit dry, though no worse than if I had grilled it in the convection oven. The carrots are a bit firm but definitely cooked, and the potatoes are done to perfection. It amazed me how little liquid was on the bottom of the pan. The next time I cook a dry meat, I will put it UNDER the veggies and maybe add a dash of water. Still, considering that this dish was cooked by the power of El Sol and didn't heat up my kitchen, I'm hooked! In the beginning, I wanted an oven that could reach standard oven temps, but this simple little setup works a lot like my crock pot, and I can see a lot of use for this solar slow cooker.