BoomChef Solar Grill
Serving Hungry Boomerangers Since 2005
The BoomChef Mark I is a solar grill intended to cook hotdogs at boomerang competitions. I distinguish it from the more common solar roaster oven design because I put as much solar energy as practical into heating up a grill surface. Hotdogs sizzle when you put them in. It captures direct solar energy through the top glass, and more reflected up from the bottom. It's a black aluminum grill that fits inside a wooden frame, glass on the top & bottom and reflectors to bounce in extra sunlight. I lined the inside of the box with aluminum and weatherstripped the glass. That's pretty much it. Cheap to build, free to operate - just the way I like things. In order to safely cook food, you want the interior temp to be 150F for at least 15 minutes to kill bacteria. BoomChef can easily do that even in partial clouds. Better still, slow-cooking is more even so it's never burned outside and raw inside, and it won't dry out. It will cook veggies, chicken, fish, burgers, you name it. I focus on hotdogs because the other stuff can be messy and boomerang competitions rarely have running water or any means of cleaning up.
Milestone Events:
6/23/07 BoomChef grills 28 dogs at the 27th New England Boomerang Corroboree, Greenfield (MA) Community College
High puffy clouds, highest cooking temp: 230F. People were eating from 11:30am to 5:30pm, the last dogs to come off were not overcooked or dry despite having been on for several hours, airtight heat trap design has excellent cook & hold moisture retention.
6/11/06 First Presbyterian Church Summer Picnic, New Haven CT
Sunny but high winds, decreased efficiency on bottom reflectors due to kids poking around and resulting ice cream drippage. Cooked 41 dogs in 90 minutes, good supplement to the charcoal grill.
8/2/05 Cooked two big salmon filets with garlic & lemon in 49 minutes, perfect
6/30/05 US Boomerang Association Nationals at White River Junction VT. New record cooking temp of 250F. Plus my Spinnaker 48" six-blader also held onto the title for largest catchable boomerang. I charged $2 for solar-grilled SunDogs with deep discounts for poetry and original drawings of tournament director John Flynn. Grilled 32 dogs, got some good drawings and some mediocre poems.
5/23/05 BoomChef reaches 200F, cooks 4 dogs
Associated gear:
- tongs & hotpads (people don't quite take this seriously but it gets hot in there)
- cooler for condiments &c.
- extrta glass in case of breakage
- oven thermometer
- binder clips to hold glass, extra reflectors in place
- extra mylar & foil
- wrench & screwdriver for on-site assembly
- squeegee to clean class
- grill lifters for disassembly when grill is stil hot
