Build a solar cooker with a satellite dish

What you need:

• Satellite dish
• Aluminum foil or spray paint for reflective silver
• black color (oven paint or similarly heat-resistant)
• pot
• wire

Advantages of the solar cooker

• The solar cooker is actually suitable for warmer areas where the sun shines more often and more extensively. In Germany, using a solar cooker is little more than a gimmick, but you can learn a lot while tinkering with the cooker.
• If you have a satellite dish for that building of the solar cooker, the sun's energy is optimally directed into your saucepan. In this way, you can even prepare a meal with environmentally friendly energy here in Germany. However, you need a little patience and have to adapt your recipes to the relatively low sunshine. A pot roast will hardly succeed in the German sun.
• In the solar cooker, only the pot itself gets hot, so the device is safe even when children are around. Children should not play with the solar cooker alone, because the pot actually reaches very high temperatures.
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Convert the satellite dish

1. The satellite dish has the optimal shape to collect incoming rays in one point. So that you can catch the sunlight, you must first mirror the satellite dish. Use either aluminum foil that you stick in the bowl or a reflective varnish. The smoother and more reflective the surface, the better your solar cooker will work.
2. If your saucepan is mirrored or white on the outside, paint it black with oven varnish. Old enamel pots are also suitable as long as the surface is dark.


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3. Align the satellite dish towards the sun and note the approximate angle. The pot should hang horizontally in this position.
4. Mount the pot on the support arm for the satellite receiver. This is aligned so that it is in the focal point of the bowl. Reinforce this bracket with some wire so that the pot stays stable in one place.
5. You can now use your solar cooker.