A solar cooker is pretty much what it sounds like. It is used to cook food and sterilize water. Most people do not even know they exist, but they are an effective way to cook from both an economic and efficiency point of view. The basic idea with a solar cooker is to create a box like structure that the sun heats up dramatically. If you’ve sat in a car in rush hour during the summer, you know the sun can generate a lot of heat. Instead of cooking you in a car, a solar cooker focuses on food.

So, how do we cook with it? The box structure is created with dark paneling and then covered with a clear glass or plastic top after pots and food or water has been inserted. The structure is then sealed. Much like a car, the sunlight beats through the clear top and heats the interior of the box. As the heat rises, it cooks the items inside. Yes, it produces more than enough heat to do the job. It really is as simple as that.

There are three general types of solar cookers. A box solar cooker works as described in the previous paragraph. A panel solar cooker uses reflective surfaces to focus sun on a pot to create heat and cook the material inside. A parabolic solar cooker is designed to focus the sunlight into the bottom of a concave area upon which sits pots. 

 While a solar cooker is a way to use the sun to cook water and food, it is also a potential solution to providing basic conveniences to poorer nations at a fraction of the cost of traditional ovens.