Tips for cooking beans in a solar cooker:
- While most foods can be cooked in either box cookers or panel cookers without turning the cooker to follow the sun, beans require the cooker to be turned at least once.
- Kidney beans and most other dried pulses should be soaked overnight.
- Lentils don't have to be soaked beforehand.
- Blackeyed beans (cowpeas, niébé): one hour soaking is enough to solar cook them in the CooKit. This was reported by Association des Femmes Ingénieurs du Mali (AFIMA) partners of KoZon in Mali. If you soak them longer they get blubby.
- Don't put salt in when soaking as salt extracts water from the beans.
- Under a blue sky all the pulses cooked in a CooKit are ready in 3 - 4 hours.