Nowadays, around 1.44 billion people have still no access to electricity, most of them living in rural areas in South and Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The major residential energy consumption in these regions is for cooking. This energy demand is covered by firewood, agricultural residues and/or animal dung, implying often exhausting work for the collection and causing deforestation. Solar thermal cooking systems have been developed and promoted, although their success has been limited. This paper follows another solar cooking approach by evaluating the option of combining an off-grid PV system (PV generator + battery) with very low demand electric cooking appliances. The PV-battery system to supply the load demand for the electric cooking appliances for communities of 50 persons has been calculated. Thereby, the five countries with the highest population without access to electricity have been taken into account: India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria. The levelized energy cost is around 3 c(sic) per meal or less and the life cycle emissions of the PV-battery system (manufacturing, transport and decommissioning) are around 7 gCO(2) per meal. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.