A Study of Solar Cooking: Exploring Climate-Resilient Food Preparation and Opportunities for HCI

As parts of our planet continue to experience extreme heat waves, it is more urgent than ever for human-food interaction research to examine climate-resilient and sustainable food practices. Our work, conducted in the hottest city in the USA, focuses on solar cooking as a set of creative DIY activities that use extreme heat and mitigate human impact on the environment. We report on a summer-long study whereby 7 enthusiasts built solar ovens from scratch and experimented with solar recipes ranging from slow-cooked pork and chicken to bread, kale chips, brownies, jerky, and fruit rollups. Our findings depict solar cooking as a form of iterative DIY, which, through its challenges and creative workarounds, serves as a point of engagement with both food and extreme heat. We reflect on solar cooking as a climate-resilient food practice and conclude with design considerations for HCI to support solar cooking as a habitual community practice.