Meat and Game

Meat, especially meat on the bone, cooks wonderfully in a uiTzi. It's especially brilliant at taking tough hunks of muscle and literally melting them off the bone. A good way to start is by making a herb, spice, garlic and butter "rub" and smearing the joint liberally with it. (Avoid submerging the meat in wine or stock, as it will end up with very liquidy compared to a stew cooked on a stove top.) Alternatively, marinate the meat beforehand in any mixture of spices that appeals to you - here's one in a delicious lime and coconut milk marinade.

As the joint cooks, the slow moist heat gradually breaks the chemical bonds that make meat tough, converting collagen, the amino acid trio that holds muscle to bone in the form of ligaments and tendons, into gelatin. The joint above is a leg of goat cooked Moroccan-style with prunes, potatoes, peppers and wheat berries for a day and a half. When it's time to serve it, all you need is a fork and a spoon!

Fowl

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. You can golden roast a bird in the uiTzi and end up with something fit for Thanksgiving. But what the uiTzi really performs miracles with are what in Mexico we call “garbage patch chickens”: the free range birds whose flavourful meat is lean, stringy and tough – that is, until you give it to the sun. Then they soften and plump up with the broth around them and their rich flavor reminds you to thank them for nourishing you so well.

Stocks and Broth

Stocks are amongst the elixirs of life. By slow cooking bones, gristle, skin and fat in water, the sun not only extracts flavors and minerals, but also literally melts the collagen - the strong, resilient protein chain that makes up ligaments and tendons - into scumptiously delicious and nourishing gelatin. Bone broths are good for your bones, your skin, your hair, your muscles... pretty much everything about you. And they're the secret of the best sauces in the world. The French are famous for their stocks. And with a uiTzi you don't have to simmer them for hours on your stove top. If you're starting with raw bones, you should roast them first in a hot sun for several hours. Otherwise just scrape your left-over bones into a pot with some water, bay leaves, pepper corns and a stick or two of celery or carrot, and put it out in the sun for a day!

Fish

Fish stews, fish stock, octopus, and shirmp all cook beautifully in a uiTzi. But you can also cook a fresh fish in a pan with sizzled onions and it's pretty hard to beat. It feels a little strange at first putting a fish out in the sun in a pan, but if you're prepared to trust your finger to tell you went the fish is done (the flesh changes from raw to slightly firm, bouncy) you'll have no trouble.

Gumbos and Stews

Here's a Cajun gumbo of crab, shrimp and shark cooking in the sun.