Read the entire review on the Misadventures Magazine website. Here is an excerpt:
“The second day, I decided to cook a chili recipe from Solavore’s user guide (which, along with their website, includes all sorts of dishes to try out). Unlike the dip, the chili recipe included raw meat; and I like my chili with rice, which can also be tricky to cook right–so this was a more challenging test. To top it off, that day I started cooking in the morning, before the sun was at its peak, and it was also a bit cloudy out.
Luckily, though, the Solavore comes prepared for just these sorts of conditions, and includes solar reflectors, designed to funnel the sunlight onto the oven and trap every last bit of heat. After attaching my reflectors, it took about 30 minutes for the oven to reach 200 degrees, and about three hours overall to cook my chili and rice all the way through.
I probably could have left both dishes in for about a half hour more, to really let the spices simmer and the rice soak a little longer, but the smell when I popped open the plastic cover at the three-hour mark was absolutely amazing. (Like, knocked-me-over-amazing.) And I was hungry. The rice was a bit undercooked, but I chalk that up to my inexperience with the oven. Overall, the Solar Oven Chili definitely hit the spot.”