During a recent Home Grown Food Summit, the president of SUN OVENS International, Paul Munsen, very kindly donated not one, but two, SUN OVENS for us to give away as prizes.
But it was a bit crazy: Nikki, who manages all of our incoming e-mail, was bombarded with inquiries about this particular prize.
People were asking Nikki so many questions about how the SUN OVEN works, that I contacted Paul and asked him to ship me one so I could create my own video review of it!
You can watch me unbox a SUN OVEN and cook with it for the first time here:
Once I tried it, I could immediately appreciate why SUN OVENS have been on the market for more than 30 years now.
This is a quality product.
And when it’s the middle of summer, I gotta tell you, I really appreciate being able to cook outdoors with it!
Marjory Wildcraft is the founder of The Grow Network, which is a community of people focused on modern self-sufficient living. She has been featured by National Geographic as an expert in off-grid living, she hosted the Mother Earth News Online Homesteading Summit, and she is listed in Who’s Who in America for having inspired hundreds of thousands of backyard gardens. Marjory was the focus of an article that won Reuter’s Food Sustainability Media Award, and she recently authored The Grow System: The Essential Guide to Modern Self-Sufficient Living—From Growing Food to Making Medicine.
COMMENTS(16)
I got one of these Sun ovens for my birthday a few years ago and we love it!!! It’s so nice to fix it and forget it for a busy summer day. Keeps the house cool and the tummies happy when we’ve been outside demonstrating and are finished for the day. I’m glad you are spreading the word. They are pretty rugged, easy to keep clean, useful into late fall where I live in northern Utah, and just a smart item to have for preparedness and sustainable living.
I bought a sun oven this spring and love it – I have even made tortilla chips! I was able to cook two dishes using the stacked pans and both were delicious. And beans do come out wonderful. Looking forward to the webinar and learning more – thanks for all you and the TGN team do.
ohhh, tortilla chips! do tell how 🙂
I, too, love my Sun Oven. However, I was very disappointed with the title of your post. A kitchen in a suitcase would be a good thing to go with the sun oven. Seems to be missing the sink, a place to prepare food, and some type of cold storage for those items needing refrigeration. Open to suggestions for a suitcase sized kitchen to go with that nice heat source. One about the size and weight of the Sun Oven would make for a balanced load as you carry them to the cooking spot.
Hi Majory, I know, it is harder with time zones, but do you think, it would be possible to think about your members overseas as well? I will try to stay up till 2am but I can’t do that all the time. A second viewing for a range of different time zones a bit further away might be appreciated. Keep up the good work! Cheers, Jana
Appreciate all you do to keep us informed.
After 8 or 9 years of making my own solar cookers/sun ovens (slowly getting better with each version) I bought an All American Sun Oven during the 2017 Homegrown Summit. Why did I wait?! I love this thing and the customer service at the company is amazing. I neglected to fasten the leg during a sudden wind storm (I live by the mountains) and the oven blew off the table I had set it on. Completely my faul, (and the kit has fasteners as well as a warning) but they sent me a new hinge for free to fix the problem. And, to reply to the snarky comment above, it is American made.
Sorry, comment was made below–my mistake in which reply button I hit!
I’m sure it was made in china–correct?
I’ll improvise in that case.
Thank you Marjory. Your presentation was great!
I’ve had one for a couple of years, and just today used it to melt down all the old candle wax in finished candles. My son and I love candles, and whereas I want the airtight jars for my herb storage, he was more than happy to blend the many, many melts into two new large candles. Safe and sure, I now have 3 ready to go apothecary jars and he has two great blended candles to study by as he works on his Master’s degree… 🙂 We’ve thoroughly enjoyed baked chicken, stews, biscuits, beans and ham, and a dozen other meals without heat in the house, but this was by far the best way to reuse candle bits and jars… 🙂
I like something more reliable. Here in SW Florida there is plenty of sun but … plenty of clouds too and I can’t schedule which ones will be the players at any given time so what I did instead was to install a 10.12 kW solar power plant on my roof. I can crank the AC as cold as I want and I haven’t received a utility bill for electricity since March of 2010.
That said, I cook all my meats outside in smokers. I have three electric smokers and a lovely stick burner for my bigger cooks. I even grow my own wood for cooking and have a chipper to make chips for the electric smokers. Life is good.
But then again … if they gave me a free solar oven (to pump them for others to buy them) I’m sure I would have fun discovering how my solar power and smokers stacks up against the silly things.
I fell into my sun oven… Bartered for it and also got a portable tail gate oven to go with it as a bonus. I love them both! I can bake my main meal in the Sun Go oven and put in side dishes or a loaf of bread to bake in the other. Living in the mountains of North-eastern Arizona it gets hot , but nothing like the desert and I don’t have A.C. so my solar ovens are a blessing .
I tried making my own solar oven once with aluminum foil and a cardboard box. The design needed some refinement, but it was a fun project. I should try it again with my kids as a homeschool project.
Love my sun oven. First made my cornbread, great recipe, but never as good as one made in sun oven. Fantastic! Then a pork loin roast so sweet and juicy. More to come.
I’ve had my Sun Oven for over five years. Living up near Lake Erie in OH means partly sunny days are sunny days. I’ve quickly learned to just check for signs of “doneness” when clouds make keeping a constant temp impossible.
Meat is more juicy, breads (especially my famous pumpkin bread recipe) come out great, cookies were a bit of a challenge till I found a better way to use the parchment paper, cooking veggies in mason jars next to the double stacked pans that come with the oven make the meal complete. Oh, and rewarming left overs is the best!
The information videos on the site, you can access with the purchase of your oven, are so helpful and creative. And if you don’t move it every 30 minutes, the residual heat covers a multitude of forgetful moments 🙂
I also appreciate that these ovens are made in the USA…and, every oven sold, contributes to the international outreach of the company to provide village sized ovens to communities in third world countries.
Did I tell you…I love my Sun Oven!