Hey All I was talking the Wif and she told me the Preping Girls Forum is talking about the Majic Cooker and how great that is. We then got to talking about Solar Ovens and so on and here I am.
My Wif was a Girl Scout Leader and learned how to make an Oven out of a cardboard box. You line the Box with tin foil and use charcoal brickets for heat. Once they are white hot each brickette is 50 degrees then simply add them to the inside of the box. We went camping and she made me a birtheday cake with this method and it was the best birthday I ever had. It took seven brickettes changed out every 30 minutes one or two at a time, it is easier to just keep adding more charcoal depending on the room you have. Simply adding more brickettes keeps you from opening the box for to long each time. It took about three hours to cook.
Also based on the Majic Chef or whatever the girls are talking about...I cook roast beef in the oven that garuntees the best roast ever without using a ton of electicity or propane. You need a thermometer in the oven to ensure you reach the temp. Make your roast like you would normally then place it in the COLD oven and close the door. Turn the oven on asking for 400f and when the oven reaches that temp turn it off. DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR EVER!!! This is key!!! A 3.5 lbs roast should take about 3 to 4 hours for medium/medium rare depending on the quality of your seal, a self cleaning oven has a better seal and heat retention then non-self cleaning. After the 3 - 4 hours turn the oven back on to 400f. Remeber DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR EVER!!! Once the oven reaches temp turn it off and NOW open the door and remove the beast, tent it for 10 to 15 minutes and serve as you like. I swear it will be the best beef ever. If you like it more done just cut a slice and fry it.
Just my rant...thanks for listening/reading
Proud prepping Canadian...Beh Wii Eh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_cooking
The idea is old, its pretty much a fancy version of a hay box..
but
"In the mid 1990s the thermal cooker was developed in Asia[citation needed]. It consisted of two stainless steel pots, one within the other. The inner pot, was used to bring the food to the boil and the outer, twin walled with a vacuum between the walls, was used as the container to keep the cooking process continuing.
To use the thermal cooker the food is put into the inner pot and brought to the boil, simmered for about 10 minutes and then placed in the outer pot for continued cooking. There are a number of thermal cookers on the market. Some use insulation material between the outer pot walls, others, use a vacuum.
These cookers had a particular appeal to Cantonese cooks from Guangdong in Southern China because Cantonese cuisine often requires prolonged braising or simmering.
Thermal cookers with two inner pots allow two items to be cooked at the same time, such as curry and rice. All thermal cookers are capable of cooking many dishes from soups to puddings. Cakes and bread can also be cooked by partly submerging the cake/bread tin in boiling water"
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
Those are both very interesting methods for cooking.
I guess the general idea is to retain a certain temperature for a set amount of time, with the most efficient use of resources available. By resources, I am referring to several things - cooking fuel (sunlight, wood, oil, gas, electricity), labour (the time it requires for prepping, tending and maintaining the heat), and quantity (which would be the amount of food you can cook with a certain amount of energy). A 220V radiant heat stove (your traditional red-hot coil stove in the kitchen) is terribly inefficient when you consider the amount of heat lost to merely heating up the coils, and the fact that without the infrastructure of a city's powerplant, it becomes completely useless. A solar cooker, on the other hand, uses no fuel other than sunlight, but requires a much longer heating period (efficiency) and is hampered by the quantity that it can output within a reasonable amount of time. It is also not available 24/7.
Those methods you both described are great because they have measures that allow for the efficient use of an oven (i.e. indirect heat, as opposed to over an open flame), which opens up the door to many potential culinary feasts. The tin foil prevents heat from escaping the interior, same as the double-walled outer pot in the thermal cooking method.
I'd like to see more ideas for ultralight backpacking/camping. I've tried many different backpacking solar cookers, camp stoves, candles, etc... still trying to find one that works the best, especially at -30 degree Celsius. Unfortunately for me, my survival training was done in the tropics. I can make a trap, fire, utensils, a bowl and a pot for cooking rice all out of one long piece of bamboo, but that's not something that grows here in Canada. The notion of an oven is great if there are lots of rocks around.
Perhaps there's a middle ground between something that uses a small candle/fire underneath, with an oven-like base, and a solar reflector along the top... I'll report back in mid-summer.
Well for what its worth, I learned from the locals in Iqaluit, nunavut on how they cook with very limited fuel resources, it was using rocks to make a version of a kettle stove and then making a tiny, tiny hotbox and boiling the water/tea or hot pot cooking over this area..
They would bring the pot of covered water to a simmer, take out their tea water, add in whatever they were cooking in terms of meat and veggies, then continue to simmer with lid on, then they would make up basic bread balls, flour, water, salt (dumpings anyone) and drop them in balls in towards the end, cover and let it finish..
Then they would have had a hot drink to hold and warm you, then you were served a bowl with one or two dumplings with meat/veggies/broth for the meal.. it would feed the whole family all cooked on the amount of fuel I have seen folks use for starting kindle..
I asked what if you can't find the rock and they just waved their hands around them.. they had a good point LOL as you can really only gather heating materials in a certain time of the year, you can only do this when the rocks would be avialable.. (please note this was above the tree line)
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
I have a wonder box (you bring your food to a boil for 5-15 minutes, transfer your pot to the wonder box put the wonder box lid on and leave it cooking without any fuel source (just the heat of the pot), I will be making these to sell in the new future I think, I am looking forward to getting a solar oven and a volcano stove in 2 weeks also. Canadian tire just had a charcoal starter( for BBQ) for $14 that would easily work like a small stove if you put a grill and your pot on top with the briquettes inside
Well for what its worth, I learned from the locals in Iqaluit, nunavut on how they cook with very limited fuel resources, it was using rocks to make a version of a kettle stove and then making a tiny, tiny hotbox and boiling the water/tea or hot pot cooking over this area..
They would bring the pot of covered water to a simmer, take out their tea water, add in whatever they were cooking in terms of meat and veggies, then continue to simmer with lid on, then they would make up basic bread balls, flour, water, salt (dumpings anyone) and drop them in balls in towards the end, cover and let it finish..
Then they would have had a hot drink to hold and warm you, then you were served a bowl with one or two dumplings with meat/veggies/broth for the meal.. it would feed the whole family all cooked on the amount of fuel I have seen folks use for starting kindle..
I asked what if you can't find the rock and they just waved their hands around them.. they had a good point LOL as you can really only gather heating materials in a certain time of the year, you can only do this when the rocks would be avialable.. (please note this was above the tree line)
I tried to find a "kettle Stove" on the Google but only got a bunch of kettles; except for this kijjiji listing.
http://ontario.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-other-Rare-kettle-stove-45-gals-W0QQAdIdZ474080752
It may be of interest to any of you in southern ontario...
I have a wonder box (you bring your food to a boil for 5-15 minutes, transfer your pot to the wonder box put the wonder box lid on and leave it cooking without any fuel source (just the heat of the pot), I will be making these to sell in the new future I think, I am looking forward to getting a solar oven and a volcano stove in 2 weeks also. Canadian tire just had a charcoal starter( for BBQ) for $14 that would easily work like a small stove if you put a grill and your pot on top with the briquettes inside
What is a charcoal starter? I found this;
and it definitely looks like it could be used as a BOB stove... though it is 7.5x12 inches in size