[Stoves] Cooking cassava?

[Paul Arveson]

"We need a basic overhaul, restructuring, and reorientation of the 
research establishment.  We need to look around, establish what the 
pressing needs are - solar technology is one, the development of a solar 
cooking device to offset the world firewood crisis…. We can't divorce 
anything from the needs of the rest of the world."

-- Lester Brown, Science, v. 193, 6 Aug. 1976

This is the last reference I found to solar cooking in Science, 46 years 
ago.

Paul Arveson

On 8/5/2022 5:45 PM, Patricia Mcardle wrote:
> Please watch my video 
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iDFqaCGyTQ> (/filmed in 2013 at 
> Iridimi refugee camp in eastern Chad/). It shows Sudanese refugee 
> ladies cooking boule (made from/ cornmeal)/ with a panel solar cooker. 
> Like fufu (which is made from cassava), these starchy foods are 
> normally mixed with water then stirred vigorously over high heat to 
> keep the bottom layer from burning.
>
> When slow-cooking cornmeal (/or other starchy staple foods like 
> cassava/) with a box or panel solar cooker, there is no need to stir 
> the mixture because the bottom of the pot never gets hot enough to 
> burn the food as it does when the pot is heated over an open fire.
>
> The solar cooked mixture heats slowly and evenly and resembles polenta 
> when it is fully cooked (60-90 minutes). As you can see in my video, a 
> quick and vigorous stirring of the fully cooked polenta-like meal 
> gives slow-cooked boule or fufu the same consistency as corn meal or 
> cassava cooked over an open fire and stirred constantly for 15-20 
> minutes (/but without burning any fuel/).
>
> Adding a simmer /(low heat/) function to a fuel efficient, biomass 
> burning stove increases the level of complexity of the device and the 
> possibility that after extended use, the simmer function will break. 
>  Concern about the fragility and the cost of adding a simmer function 
> to fuel efficient biomass stoves was expressed by a number of stovers 
> back in 2011 at the DOE sponsored cookstove forum 
> <https://www1.eere.energy.gov/bioenergy/pdfs/cookstove_meeting_summary.pdf>. 
> (*There is no mention of this topic in the final report, just as there 
> is no mention of solar cooking since I was informed byDOE’s  Sam 
> Baldwin that, “ "EERE is not and cannot support work on Solar Stoves”. 
>  I was also asked by Sam not to even mention solar cooking during that 
> DOE meeting.)*
>
> I continue to question the stover community’s reluctance to consider a 
> suggestion Dean Still made more than two decades ago.
>
> I agree with what he wrote on the the stovers listserve 
> <http://www.bioenergylists.org/newsgroup-archive/stoves/Past_Archives_Index.htm> in 
> 2000: "In a perfect world perhaps with a great, non polluting wood 
> stove would come a retained heat cooker (Haybox), a solar oven for 
> baking and a paraboliic or conical reflector for boiling water...Whole 
> package might cost $100 which is dinner and a movie for some folks.”
>
> If the clean cookstove sector wants to significantly reduce harmful 
> emissions and deforestation and help the billion+ poor people who 
> still cook over open fires, it makes sense to promote the use of solar 
> cookers when it’s sunny, fuel efficient stoves when it’s not sunny and 
> retained heat containers to keep food hot or even finish cooking 
> boiled food.
>
> Pat
>
> Patricia McArdle <https://solarcooking.fandom.com/wiki/Patricia_McArdle>
> Author, Farishta 
> <https://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136928898/farishta-afghan-fiction-from-the-foreign-service>, 
> a novel about Afghanistan
> Videographer 
> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_tLie5msnr6QwhEWPZIzIg/videos?view=0&sort=p> renewable 
> energy
> Member Global Advisory Council, Solar Cookers International 
> <https://www.solarcookers.org/about/team/sci-global-advisor-council/patricia-mcardle>
> Board of Advisors, Solar Household Energy 
> <http://www.she-inc.org/?page_id=293>
>
>
>
>> On Aug 5, 2022, at 9:37 AM, Paul Arveson <paularveson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> In the context of sub-Saharan Africa, I observed cooks constantly 
>> stirring pots of shaved cassava to make fufu.  I would like to know 
>> how much stirring is necessary. Is it possible to cook cassava in a 
>> closed pot under low heat without stirring?  (This is to consider the 
>> feasibility of solar cooking.)
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Paul Arveson
>> Solar Household Energy, Inc.
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>
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