Vendor roasts chicken with sunlight

Sila Sutharat, a roasted chicken street vendor from Phetchaburi, Thailand, has come up with an ingenious way of cooking chicken.

Instead of an oven or a charcoal barbecue, he uses 1,000 mobile mirrors that concentrate sunlight into a strong beam. He basically cooks meat with over 300 degrees Celsius of natural sunlight.

Like most other street vendors, Sutharat used to cook his chicken over a charcoal fire, but that all changed in 1997, when a mundane observation gave him a brilliant idea.

One day, he was hit by the sunlight reflected off the window of a passing bus, and he felt its heat. “I could possibly change it into energy,” Suthrarat told himself, and started working on a contraption to capture the sunlight and use it to cook his chicken.

Suthrarat’s solar roaster is an unusual sight that has attracted quite a few curious clients eager to taste his sun-cooked chicken.

He has been using this sustainable cooking method for two decades now, and claims it’s much better than traditional roasting methods. It’s virtually free, cooks the chicken evenly, and best of all, it’s 100% clean.

The Phetchaburi Rajabhat University acknowledged Suthrarat’s ingenious idea and awarded him an honorary science degree.