This portable solar oven offers lightweight, zero-carbon cooking

Simmer like a crock pot and bake like an oven, using the clean energy of sunlight.

Perhaps the simplest way, and the most accessible way, to use solar energy is to cook our food with it, using a solar oven, and Solavore’s Sport model could be the gateway appliance to cleaner cooking. I recently got to spend some time using the Sport, which is a reboot of the once popular Solar Oven Society (SOS) model that went out of production in 2013, and found it to be easy to use, light and portable, and a convenient addition to home cooking. (I previously covered Solavore’s ‘buy one give one’ Indiegogo campaign, which aimed to enable more solar ovens in the developing world to act as economic tools for change in those communities.)

The Sport, which is made entirely in the US and weighs just 9 pounds (4 kg), has a base made from injection-molded resin, with an inch of closed cell foam insulation between the outer and inner powder-coated liner, and can maintain high enough oven temperatures during brief cloudy periods to keep food cooking (“thirty minutes of bright sun out of every sixty will keep you cooking”). The top, or lid, also integrates a double-layer insulating system, although with an inch of dead air space instead of foam, and although it fits snugly on the oven, it also features metal clips for securing the lid (handy on windy days), as well as attachment points for the reflector system if needed.

Read the full review: Solavore Sport solar oven offers zero-carbon cooking in a lightweight package (review)