A good first food to try is a small quantity of rice, since it is fairly easy to cook and looks very different cooked than it does raw. Chicken or fish is also very easy to cook. See cooking hints or cooking times . A temperature of 250 F is plenty for all kinds of cooking. Thus if you are cooking food that contains water, it cannot get hotter than this either.
Conventional cookbooks call for high temperatures to shorten the cooking time and for browning.
Food just takes longer in most solar cookers, but since the sun is shining directly on the lid of the pot, the food browns just about as well as in a conventional oven. It is not recommended that you cook meats unattended when there is a possibility of substantial cloudiness. More information on food safety, go here . If you can be sure that the sky will stay clear though, you can put in any type of food in the morning, face the oven to the south, and the food will be cooked when you get home at the end of the day. Their thrice-yearly newsletter, the Solar Cooker Review , is also available there.