[HN Gopher] Using the power of the sun to roast green chile
___________________________________________________________________
Using the power of the sun to roast green chile
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 103 points
Date : 2022-08-22 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sandia.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sandia.gov)
| mythrwy wrote:
| This reminds me, it's Chile season in New Mexico right now!
|
| Every year we get 2 boxes and have them roasted, then clean and
| freeze them. Towards the end of the year the stash gets a little
| low and have to start rationing.
|
| The boxes are big, but much smaller after roasting. They then put
| the roasted chiles in plastic bags so you can carry them home.
| You then have to wait a few hours to peel and de-seed the chiles
| because they are so hot from roasting.
|
| It's a tradition here and many people from all walks of life are
| out buying roasted chiles from now until the frost.
| CephalopodMD wrote:
| Green chile is an American treasure. Thank you Sandia national
| labs. Very tasty science.
| silisili wrote:
| Red chile is better.
|
| - A contemptuous New Mexican.
| artursapek wrote:
| They're each great on different foods IMO. Nothing better
| than a green chile cheeseburger, or a red chile enchilada
| plate at The Shed.
| silisili wrote:
| Yeah, I was just trying to start a NM flamewar.
|
| What's more confusing to me is that different places cook
| them differently. Some places I love green and hate red,
| and some vice versa.
|
| Though in places that do both equally well, I gotta say I'm
| team red :).
| lp251 wrote:
| one day I'll be able to tolerate the red at posas
|
| not yet, though!
| LarryDarrell wrote:
| You both can be right with Christmas! (Red & Green)
| silisili wrote:
| Few things better in life than a Chimichanga covered in
| Christmas.
| elwell wrote:
| Opportunity for organic, free trade, solar-roasted coffee
| breakyerself wrote:
| Did you mean fair trade?
| freyfogle wrote:
| We have that in Pueblo, Colorado (also home of the best green
| chile) https://solarroast.com/
| pavon wrote:
| > also home of the best green chile
|
| Them's fight'n words.
|
| > https://solarroast.com/
|
| I do like that coffee. Nice strong robust roast without
| tasting burnt.
| freyfogle wrote:
| The Pueblo Chile Growers Association is more than ready for
| the fight!
|
| The next Chile & Frijoles Festival is Sept 23-25th
| https://pueblochilefestival.com
| hpkuarg wrote:
| Sandia National Labs working on the big questions of our time, I
| see ;-)
|
| Disclaimer: I love New Mexico -- I'm just taking the piss. It's
| probably one of the most underrated states in the union.
| imroot wrote:
| I'm surprised it wasn't at LANL, considering one of the shops
| in Los Alamos near the lab has this amazing hatch chile burrito
| that's under $8 and is 10/10 in terms of flavor.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Do you have a name?
| watersb wrote:
| Possibly the Chile Works or El Parasol?
|
| El Parasol: https://elparasol.com/
|
| Google Street View of the sign to the Chile Works, off
| Trinity Drive: - https://www.google.com/maps/@35.8796938,-1
| 06.3006991,3a,75y,...
| code_duck wrote:
| Personally I'd go to Viola's. But in general, you're not
| going to have to look far for a good burrito with green
| chile in NM.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| There are such places near SNL too. More, because Albuquerque
| is much larger than Los Alamos.
|
| e.g. Vick's Vittles, Tia Betty Blues, Golden Pride, and of
| course the old standby Grandma's K & I Diner which has been
| feeding nuclear engineers for 62 years.
| smalley wrote:
| I know you're acknowledging you're joking.
|
| For those who do find themselves bothered by this kind of
| thing, these projects are almost always a few layers deep on
| what they're actually researching. I would assume this is more
| fun demo with a potential economic application in large scale
| roasting but that the research value (and intern training
| value) are in the general research area of broad solar
| concentrator R&D. If you look at the publication history for
| the folks involved you'll see a lot of papers on molten salt
| solar concentrators (materials, plant design, physics of etc).
|
| Sandia does a lot of really interesting and valuable research
| (across all the sites but NM and CA in particular).
| markdown wrote:
| Do they mean chillies?
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| No, they mean chile. That is the way it's spelled in Spanish
| and parts of Southern US.
|
| It also doesn't really matter, does it?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's pretty regional. Southerners tend to use "chili" for
| both the pepper and the dish in my experience, while
| southwesterners almost exclusively use "chile" for the pepper
| and "chili" for the dish. I've only seen Brits/indians use
| "chilly/chilli" (two ll's).
| mc32 wrote:
| And then there is the country to differentiate from too
| -capitalization can help, but not always.
|
| So there is vegetable, dish, temperature, country and
| informal variant word for child (though this last one is
| only an issue in orthography)
| samatman wrote:
| I was an embarrassing number of years old when I realized
| Jimi Hendrix wasn't just really into Voodoo Chili.
|
| I mean. Still a minor. But it stings to this day.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| You're still excused while you kiss this guy.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| No?
| azinman2 wrote:
| Wonder if this technique, which allows the drum to get to 900F,
| could be used instead of gas for wok cooking?
| [deleted]
| arcticbull wrote:
| Totally, assuming you're able to situate the wok in the middle
| of the New Mexico desert, and are satisfied with the safety
| profile of not putting your hand near it lest it become part of
| the dish.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I remember as a kid, in India, solar, gobar/bio gas and
| alternative ways of cooking and heating were all the rage.
| Then liquified petroleum gas became cheaper and everything
| just died. Here's[1] an example of what I'm talking about. It
| was mostly for rural areas without reliable ways of
| delivering cooking fuels.
|
| [1] https://www.rudrasolarenergy.com/solar-cookers.html
| (parabolic mirror based "cooker")
|
| https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/gobar-gas-
| plant-3976916... (basically methane collected from
| composting)
| yegle wrote:
| Oh wow I vividly remember in the second grade there's a
| story of grandma cooking noodles using a solar cooker (it
| was in the Chinese textbook for Mainland China circa 1998).
|
| Searching for a couple keywords on Taobao and apparently
| you can still buy those things. E.g.
| https://www.taobao.com/list/item/wap/595475929092.htm
| scoot wrote:
| "situate" -> "place".
|
| I'll take "things a native English speaker would never say"
| for 100.
| [deleted]
| wyager wrote:
| A key innovation of electricity is that it is a fungible form of
| power transmission. In particular, this allows the decoupling of
| concerns between the _generation_ of energy and the _application_
| of energy.
|
| I hope green energy enthusiasm doesn't take us back to the days
| of waterwheels being directly connected to grist-mills.
| csours wrote:
| I wonder if they would get better results with a retro-mirror on
| the other side of the roaster to reflect IR and catch any rays
| that didn't get into the roaster
|
| ---
|
| The other question is: is it cheaper to do this, or just to set
| up solar panels and a resistive heating element based roaster.
|
| I don't know of any super high temperature heat pumps, but that's
| the next thing I think of in making the process more efficient.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I can't imagine resistive heating winning against this, since
| current photovoltaic panels are relatively inefficient compared
| to just shoving the radiation directly into your target.
| skykooler wrote:
| At those temperatures you'd need something multi-stage with
| liquid metals, which is going to be a nightmare to engineer -
| you'd need some way of preheating it to melt it so you could
| turn it on in the first place, for example. And heat pumps are
| much less efficient at high temperature differentials, as would
| be the case here.
| braingenious wrote:
| This is so cool! As a teenager I helped a buddy build an
| incredibly dangerous contraption that boiled water using a
| parabolic reflector and it was a lot of fun!
|
| This actually makes me want to buy one to play with...
| LegitShady wrote:
| I saw one built from an old giant satellite dish that could
| light a hot dog on fire in seconds even when it was deep cold
| winter full of snow outside. 10/10 would eat hot dogs that way
| again.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Neat. Maybe community roasters could be setup and a whole town's
| worth of peppers could be roasted by the sun.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I saw a story about this last week and I'm hoping someone can
| explain why this is novel - were sun ovens not a popular thing
| there? Feels like I saw people using drum cookers to roast things
| as far back as the 90's... it did seem like this is a more
| advanced cooker, and perhaps it being at scale is the story?
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Might be the level of heat required?
|
| > Using 38 to 42 of the 212 heliostats -- mirror-like devices
| used to focus sunlight -- at the thermal test facility, Ken was
| able to achieve a temperature above 900 degrees Fahrenheit
| uniformly across the roasting drum, he said. This is comparable
| to the temperature of a traditional propane chile roaster.
|
| Your standard oven certainly isn't going to get to 900 degrees
| Fahrenheit. So maybe 90's drum cookers could roast things like
| chicken wings, but probably not chiles.
| pavon wrote:
| Yeah, this is more for fun than anything. Sandia has done
| concentrated solar research for decades. Roasting chiles is a
| New Mexico tradition. Hey, lets throw a chile roaster on the
| top of our solar collector tower! I'm only surprised it
| wasn't done earlier.
|
| Not really a practical or serious technology at this time.
| sp332 wrote:
| Sun ovens are for lower temperatures. Propane roasters are used
| because you want to singe the outside of the pepper fast enough
| to not overcook the inside. This solar roaster hits 900F and
| it's still quite a bit slower than the propane. But it's good
| enough for good flavor apparently.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| So this is interesting - I think both you and Qworg above are
| sharing something that is news to me... so when y'all roast
| peppers, you are just trying to put a char on the outside,
| but you are leaving the inside not fully cooked and/or still
| "al dente"?
| jofer wrote:
| Ideally, yes, but the pepper still winds up fully cooked,
| it's just that it's not mush.
|
| You want to blister the skin so it peels off easily. That's
| the main goal, but a lot of flavor comes out of
| caramelizing / charring things during the process, as well.
|
| If you cook things too much, the entire pepper just turns
| to mush.
|
| Heating things up enough to blister the skin means that the
| inside is steamed in the process. You want to get it so
| that it's cooked, but will still hold up enough to be
| peeled and sliced.
| mbg721 wrote:
| In the recipes I've seen, if you're charring the skins
| under an oven broiler or on a grill, you can then put
| them in a bowl and cover them, to let them finish
| steaming and make the skin easier to peel off.
| SamBam wrote:
| Indeed, even an Italian red pepper salad is best done
| directly on a grill or the flames of the burner, and not in
| an oven or anything.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| In New Mexico, roasting chiles is a thing. My wife, raised
| there half a century ago, roasts her own _to this day_.
| Because, they 're better that way of course!
| gaetgu wrote:
| Definitely. During Chile season you can smell the roasters
| set up all over town. One of the best smells, in my opinion.
| artursapek wrote:
| I love that smell so much!
| wrycoder wrote:
| There are lots of solar driers, but this is a roaster with
| temps high enough to char the chilies.
|
| They may have eliminated a lot of CO2, but the smoke could
| still use some attention! (You definitely don't want to get
| your head near there to see how the roasting is coming!)
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes if you're willing to build a huge heliostat you can heat
| things to arbitrary temperatures. I first saw this dish-shaped
| heliostat in the mid-90's in Texas, and its biggest problem was
| controlling it so it didn't melt the hot side of its generator.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_Energy_Systems
|
| The only thing that's really new in solar in the last thirty
| years is the steady progress of semiconductor physics and
| technology. All the rest of it just follows from "sun is large
| and hot" which has been known for a long long time.
| Qworg wrote:
| The temperatures to cook green chili are really high - you want
| to get some good caramelization/burnt spots on the outside, at
| scale, very quickly. That's why they usually use big propane
| burners on the outside of the steel cage drum and rotate the
| peppers.
|
| Most solar ovens can get high temps, but they require tradeoffs
| on scale or speed.
| jf wrote:
| Thanks for this comment. I didn't realize that cooking green
| chiles was different!
|
| My grandfather was a farm worker. He would bring home red
| chiles from the fields and roast them in the sun on his roof.
| So my first reaction to this story was "what's the big deal?"
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-22 23:00 UTC)