Maggi noodles never tasted so good - a solar story

Written by Anna da Costa / 17 December 2008 / Read Anna da Costa's latest blog entries.

It was with excitement and intreague that I made my way to Khan market, in Delhi, last Saturday. An unlikely place, you might imagine, to learn about Solar Cooking, but, as I was soon to discover, a perfect place to discover this natural alchemy.

I made my way to the rooftop of an NGO called Manzil, that nestles like a peaceful haven amidst this affluent shopping hub. Manzil, as I discovered, works with low income young Indians, to improve their chances in life through education and support around livelihood generation. Guided by their kind and warm Director, Ravi, it does so in a most intuitive way, responding to the needs and interests of the youth that come there, so as to best nurture their development of skills.

Keshav Jaini, Director of Wild Ventures, who has worked with and demonstrated Solar Cookers for many years, had come to do a demonstration, for a wonderful group of young people that Manzil had magnetically brought together. Lost in a haze of little Hindi comprehension, I followed the laughter and light to the roof, past young people sitting on computers, and resting guitars.

The brightness was blinding as we sat down together in a circle on straw mats, ready for our lesson on how to make water boil and food cook with sunlight, the same sunlight that warmed our faces right now. Magically? I imagined.

Keshav started his demonstration, pulling out a simple piece of strangely shaped cardboard, lined with reflective silver paper along one side, which he swiftly folded into a sort of u-shaped box. It seemed fantastically simple;

Given our time constraints, we used maggi noodles for the demonstration, but you can cook a great range of foods on even the most basic solar cookers, including pilau, dal, rice, vegetables, and breads, using nothing but the sun's energy and some simple laws of physics. The best news is that you can make them yourself too.

After the packet of maggi noodles had been placed in a saucepan, and covered in a cup's worth of water, we were ready to begin. Keshav put a lid on the pan, enclosed it in a clear plastic bag, tied at the open end with a clothes peg, and then placed it in the centre of the silvery cardboard box. This was it, all done, and all that was needed now was to wait.

The shiny box 'cooker' itself was placed perpendicular to the sun's rays, to maximise the light reaching the pan, itself reflected by the cooker's silvery sides. The saucepan itself had been painted black on the outside, with simple blackboard paint, to maximise the absorption of the sun's light rays as heat, as they reflected onto it from all sides by the shiny box. As the final flourish, the clear plastic bag served to let in the light, and trap heat around the saucepan (http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/How_solar_cookers_work#Principles).

As we sat on the rooftop, watching and waiting, brought together by this spectacle, we had the chance to learn all about the needs and advantages of solar cooking. And they are numerous. 

Did you know that biomass burning and biofuel cooking are two of the major sources of elemental carbon in India? - not only contributing to climate change, but also to numerous premature deaths due to indoor air pollution. By cutting down the need for such fuels significantly, solar cookers can provide a great benefit. Solar cooking is completely carbon and cost neutral, running on light rays that reach the earth from the sun.

Did you also know that rural women in India walk up to 1400km/year to collect gas or wood to supply their stoves, and that urban families in many developing countries now spend up to a third of their income for cooking fuel? Through using solar cookers, low income families, can recover significant economic, safety and time benefits to be used for other things.

For health too, solar cookers are important. They can be used not only to cook food, but also to pasturise milk and water, minimising risks to health of unclean supplies. Nutrients that would be destroyed by intensive heating over gas are retained in food when it is cooked on a solar cooker leaving it more nutritious when it reaches your plate.

It is quite amazing that a solar cooker can take water to boiling point. Who would have believed, truly, that the same light that reaches our eyes, and all of the objects around us daily, when treated in a certain way, can be transformed to concentrated heat and metamorphose cold, dry, solid food into warm, cooked and edible delights?

An hour and a half passed before I knew it, and it was time to open the pot. With oven gloves on Keshav carefully removed the blackened pot from its clear plastic wrapping, and opened the lid. Miraculously, there inside were fully cooked, squishy noodles, ready to eat.

The pleasure and delight at this spontaneous metamorphosis was tangible within us all, and even though we had in fact added a bit too much water, so that they were somewhat soggy, I can honestly say they were the best Maggi noodles I've ever had. I think my companions agreed. They certainly planned to test out recipes for the following week!

We will be taking this technology with us on the Climate Solutions Road Tour, and showcasing it at many of the stops we visit. Although it has had great rollout in Africa, with 50,000 in the Sahel, where much of the forest cover has gone, no-one has yet taken a model for Indian rollout, popularisation and capacity building head on.

Solar cookers may not necessarily be able to meet all the culinary needs of society, such as speed, night-time cooking and every food recipe, but they are certainly a crucial piece of the puzzle that has been undervalued, under-invested in and underdeveloped to date.

After the meeting on the rooftop, I was left with the feeling that we all have something to learn from this about what we value and the way we live, something that perhaps can only be recognised through the process of doing, and something we could incorporate into each of our lives in different ways.

Furthermore, to roll out this technology en mass in India, taking it to rural areas, with low power, incomes and resources is an entrepreneurial, and beautiful sustainable development opportunity i'm convinced. What are your thoughts?

 For more information on the may different forms and methods of solar cooking, visit: www.solarcooking.org