Pots and pans used on solar cookers should be matte black in color to maximize the absorption. This conversion is maximized by using materials that conduct and retain heat.

The interaction between the light energy and the receiver material converts light to heat and this is called conduction. Converting light energy to heat energy: Solar cookers concentrate sunlight onto a receiver such as a cooking pan.Solar cooking products are typically designed to achieve temperatures of 65 ☌ (150 ☏) (baking temperatures) to 400 ☌ (750 ☏) (grilling/searing temperatures) on a sunny day. For most household solar cooking applications, such high temperatures are not really required. Depending on the geometry of the surface, sunlight could be concentrated by several orders of magnitude producing temperatures high enough to melt salt and metal. Concentrating sunlight: A mirrored surface with high specular reflection is used to concentrate light from the sun into a small cooking area.

The principle of cooking meals from the sun was largely developed in the French Foreign Legion, in the 1870s. The first academic description of the principles of a solar cooker is by the Swiss geologist, meteorologist, physicist, mountaineer and Alpine explorer Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, in 1767. In ancient times, the use of solar energy was believed to have existed in civilizations amidst the Greeks, Romans and the Chinese, though it lacked the use of cooking in its purposes. An Indian academic demonstrates a solar cooker in 1963

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