Helio Hard Cooked Eggs

by Christa Upton
(South Dakota)

Recipes Ten and Eleven in the Solar Hot Pot

Helio Hard-Cooked Eggs

There isn’t much to this recipe, but I had to try it—imagine hard-cooking eggs with no water! We are trying 10 eggs to see if we can get that many done at once.

As recommended, put eggs straight into Hot Pot dry, cover, set up facing the sun, and set timer for one hour. Check (without opening lid) until done. Adjust to sun if necessary. We let ours go about 2 hours and 15 minutes with a good, strong, morning-to-noon sun.

They said the eggs would get little brown spots on the outside when they are done. We peeled one to see how it did, and voila! It was super! A very nice hard-cooked egg. What fun! But.... As we peeled the rest of the eggs, we found that 6 out of 10 weren’t quite done—oops. They were weirdly mushy in the whites and an under-done yolk on the inside.

SO next time we will pay more attention to those brown spots! We didn’t pay attention, and I’m guessing the underdone eggs were the ones with few or no brown spots. Plus, next time we’ll try 5 or 6 eggs instead of 10.

Here is what ours looked like after 135 minutes (minus the first one we peeled, in case you’re counting LOL):

picture of eggs (below)

By the way, our girls are learning Greek root words in school, so I couldn’t help borrowing from the Greek for this recipe name and the other one with the hamburger. (smile)

Same day—now we’re going to do a peach cobbler!


Sunrise Peach Cobbler

Of course you can’t really start this at sunrise because the sun is not high enough in the sky, but maybe those pretty peaches will remind you of the sunrise. LOL

I think I got this cobbler batter from somewhere on this website, but I can’t check because I don’t have good access to internet right now.

Anyway, prepare your fruit first.

5 medium peaches: peel if you like, slice thinly, then:

honey (drizzle a little over peaches, maybe 1 t.)
1 t. flour (sprinkle over peaches)
2 t. lemon juice (sprinkle over peaches)

But actually this time, we have a back-log of canned peaches (and no fresh), so we’re using those. Drained them and just added a wee bit of flour (like a few pinches sprinkled lightly over them. Not sure we actually needed that flour, though.)

1:00 pm—grease lower half of Hot Pot (like you would grease a baking pan), and preheat Hot Pot by setting up facing the sun (with lid on).

Then prep by mixing:

1/2 c. unbleached white flour
1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour
3 T sugar
1/2 t. cream of tartar
1/4 t. baking soda

Whisk together:

1 egg
1/4 c. water
2 T oil

Pour wet mixture into the dry mixture, stir a few times, and then—as Alton Brown (Food Network) would say, “Walk away! Just walk away!” Over-mixing cobbler batter will produce an unpleasant result, so resist that urge to mix out all the lumps. (smile)

1:15 pm—pour batter into Hot Pot. Gently put fruit mixture on top, trying to distribute over batter. Cover, set timer for 60 minutes.

We had some stronger wind this afternoon, so my DH (Dear Hubby) came up with this to help stabilize the aluminum panels (there are heavy jugs of water in the plastic bin weighting it down):


Genius! I love how he did that!!

2:15 pm—check cobbler to see if it’s done by gently tipping Pot back and forth (use pot holders!) It’s not done if the batter in the bottom seems to move ‘wetly’ (can something move wetly? LOL Okay, a better description from DH is “Jell-O”—”Jell-O batter” isn’t done yet.) If not done, keep checking every 20-30 minutes until batter is set and pretty much stays still when you tip it. (Adjust Hot Pot to sun while cooking.)

Ours took until 3:45, and even then it’s kind of ‘underdone,’ but it still tasted great!!! (smile) Though if you’re paranoid about eggs being fully-cooked, you’ll probably want to get your cobbler more done than ours.



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Welcome to the "sometimes-not-quite-cooked-club".
We all have times when the food is not quite the way we wanted due to a number of reasons and factors...it happens. But, most of the time (99%) we solar cook our food without much problem.

We have had our eggs do the same when we have had too many at a time. We learned and just allowed for more time to cook all of them the next time.

And, wind. You discovered the solar cooks "jerry rig" solution to bracing solar cookers on windy days. Wind is a constant issue at certain times of the year, but most wind is bearable and does not require calling off the solar cooking.

You have learned a lot in a month and half...

Nathan
Admin.