I wish there was an energy efficient way to cook
In the Philippines where my family lives there has been an awful lot of deforestation over the years. One estimate says that 97% of the old growth forest is gone and large patches of agricultural land and open space is now predominant. Which is really sad because with the loss of forest you also lose all the animals that go along with it, and the ecosystems that those forests support.
While clearing land for farming is certainly the biggest reason for the trees going there is also the fact that many people use an old style dirty kitchen or 3 stone fire to cook their food. Cutting trees for the firewood, breathing in the smoke, and adding to air pollution don't seem like a great idea to me.
Which meant that for a very long time I've been trying to find ways whereby someone could cook a meal using entirely renewable sources.
Previous attempts have been only partially successful
I've done a lot of different things in the past trying to find the best way to cook using only solar energy. Cooking with direct solar heat in a solar oven was partially effective when I tried making a cake. Cooking directly using a parabolic solar oven worked fine but the amount that could be cooked was very small and the cooking technique very odd.
With my first Lead-Acid battery pack it would run out of power quickly, was really heavy to move, and the charging setup what very inefficient. My new LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate or Lipo) battery worked great for charging cellphones and was easy to charge with a USB-C solar panel but at only 97Wh of power it was only able to cook two eggs in a very small crock pot.
Let's say I've had a number of near successes but nothing I'd want to recommend
Now I should point out that I could cook quite nicely with my Bluetti device, however, it requires multiple solar panels to charge (one panel won't work). It is also not very efficient and uses a lot of energy when cooking with 'typical' appliances.
But technology has gotten cheaper and advanced
But technology has gotten better and being able to buy inexpensive cooking appliances has gotten much better over the years. Today I am going to try and cook with a 297Wh battery that I recently picked up off of Amazon. At $249 CAD ($180HBD) its not cheap, but then again its 80% cheaper than a Bluetti and roughly twice the price of a much smaller 97Wh unit. It quite nicely charges from a single, portable solar panel but the question remains. Can I make a meal with it?
If I try to use a halogen oven, countertop burner or other 'typical' cooking appliance there is virtually no chance that it will succeed but I found a cook little rice cooker that uses only 200W of power. It is designed as a lunch box cooker but if it can make rice only using 200W--seems like it might be a winner!
Making lunch
Just so you don't have to read the whole article, I was able to make a perfectly edible lunch on less than the 300Wh of power. Here is the final result :
Image is mine
Meat, rice and vegetable all cooked and edible. Even had power to spare!
and I made the food using a fairly inexpensive rice cooker from Amazon.
Image source: Amazon.ca
Now I could have got it for cheaper from aliexpress.com but then I'd be waiting weeks for the item to arrive.
It is incredibly easy to make food in this little device. Here's how it went.
Measure and clean the rice
I measured a half cup of rice (which was way too much) and then I rinsed the rice a couple times. Once added to the bowl and rinsed it looked like this.
Add water, broth, or soup
Now I had some onion soup leftover from a previous cooking experiment so I added that at a 1.2 : 1 ration (just over 1/2 cup soup for 1/2cup rice). I could have just used water or perhaps broth but I figured the soup would add more flavour.
Looks unappealing but then again, most food does before it is cooked.
Add some meat
A meal isn't really a meal without meat, at least according to my father-in-law. In that light I decided to add a frozen wiener to the mix.
It is a small bowl though so I cut it into small pieces
Before adding to the rice and soup mixture.
Add some vegetables
Vegetables add more vitamins to the mix so I decided to cut up some broccoli and carrots to the cooker. Nothing special there. Just cut and add to the second layer of the cooker.
Add water to the steamer
Now this unit cooks with steam. Water is placed on the bottom of the device The heating element turns the water to steam and then the steam cooks the food. Very efficient
top view of the rice steamer
After I add the bottom pan with rice and meat and top layer with veggies.
Plug it in and get cooking
Put the lid on the whole thing. Plug it into the power box and turn the steamer on.
Now it says it is drawing 229 watts which is well within what the battery pack can put out At that power draw we have at least an hour and likely 90 minutes. More than enough time to get things cooked!
About 40 minutes later (I didn't time exactly as I was chatting with the family)
Open up the steamer and no surprise a bunch of steam comes out!
My camera isn't faulty, the image is foggy because there was a thick cloud of steam.
Open up the two pots and you get to see veggies that are nicely steamed on one side and cooked rice with meat on the other.
Sure it looks pretty awful but I'll guarantee when it was scooped out, fluffed up a bit and then presented on a plate it looked much better than it did in the rice steamer. Head on back to the title image to see the final product.
Final thoughts
Overall I was very pleased with the food. I look forward to making many more little meals like this using nothing but sunshine and a battery pack. It isn't versatile for making a lot of different dishes but as long as I can get some nutritious food with no waste that seems like a win for me.
Especially nice because the battery pack, solar panel and cooker are fairly light. Not unreasonable to take them on a hike with me. How nice to get an actual cooked meal while out camping.
Of course you may have other ideas or comments and I'd love to hear them.
Otherwise that's my creative attempt at cooking while using a minimal amount of electricity that could be harvested from sunlight from a single simple solar panel
Final note: The Battery unit is a VTOMAN 600w, 297Wh battery pack
Solar panel : 60W folding solar panel with USB-C output and 19V barrel plug output
Cooking apparatus : 200W Rice steamer marketed as lunch warmer.
How to charge the power box? Easy as charging a cellphone. Unfold solar panel into sunlight and plus the power box into the plug on the solar panel. No charge controller, no complicated switches, and no electrician needed. If you can plug in a cellphone and find sunshine you can recharge the box :)