Pinto beans can be cooked in a solar oven just as easily as in a crockpot. In fact, cooking in a solar oven is often compared to cooking in a crockpot.
Solar Oven vs. Crockpot
A crockpot provides low, even heat that slowly cooks and tenderizes without a lot of fuss and bother. In the same way, a solar oven slowly cooks and tenderizes with only a minimum amount of watching. Just about anything that can be cooked in a crockpot can be cooked in a solar oven, with very little alteration to the original recipe.
Today I gave the solar oven a little competition by cooking the exact same thing in the crockpot. My goal was to see how the solar oven stacked up against a crockpot. I choose pinto beans – a very easy test.
Pinto Beans The Test
One cup of dried pinto beans was put into the crockpot and one cup was put into the round granite ware pot that comes with the Sun Oven. Three cups of cool water was added to each pot. The pinto beans were left to sit and soak for one hour. (They could have soaked longer, but I wanted to get them started cooking).
The beans were started cooking at 9:30 a.m. At that time, the crockpot was turned on high and the beans were covered and put out into a cold, un-preheated solar cooker.
The beans were cooked in the All-American Sun Oven. For a review of the Sun Oven, please read All American Sun Oven : Hottest Oven on the Market
Periodically, during the day, the Sun Oven was realigned to keep it focused to the sun. At noon, another cup of water needed to be added to the beans in the solar oven, but not to the beans in the crockpot. The solar oven temperature was 350F (176C).
The Results
After 6 hours, at 3:30 p.m., the solar oven beans were soft and ready to eat, just needed to add some seasoning — salt and pepper for us. But the crockpot beans were still a little hard, so I left them to cook for another 2 hours. At 5:30 pm, they were soft and ready to eat, but still not quite as soft as the solar beans. In addition, the crockpot beans were darker in color than the solar beans.
CONCLUSION
I love my crockpots, but today the solar oven won. Clearly, no matter the method, it takes quite a while to cook pinto beans. The longer they cook, the softer they get.
In conclusion, a solar oven does indeed cook similar to a crockpot. The long slow cooking method allows food to tenderize and the flavors to blend.
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At what altitude do you live? I’m looking for the way to cook pinto beans in the solar oven at 5,500 feet above sea level…
Hi Colleen, the altitude where I live is 1,240 ft above sea level. I truly do not have any experience cooking at altitudes much higher than this. I do know that solar ovens are used in the base camps on Mt Everest in order to conserve fuel. I know of many solar cookers who live in the northern parts of the United States. So solar cooking is possible at higher elevations. In general, though, it will take longer to cook at higher altitudes. Start early and keep the solar oven well focused into the sun to keep the heat up. Good luck with your solar cooking. Merry