Everyday cooking on a woodstove, who does it?

[fishalive12345]

Hi,
just wondering about the practicalities and limitations of cooking on a woodstove.

It seems that the overwhelming majority of designers, builders and experimenters are men. Also, a lot of the threads we read deal with the planning and building of woodstoves. Enthusiasm and hopes are high at this stage.

So what happens after? How successful are these builds for everyday heating and cooking, under what circumstances, and who is using and tending to them? What would you do differently if you could start again?

Would be very interested in hearing a range of voices and experiences on this topic.
Thanks,

Brian

[martyn]

I use my stove primarily as a hot plate for cooking but also for radiant heat in the colder months, it is situated in a summer house away from our main house and it is only used for entertaining.
However for cooking it is nothing short of superb, I have a big steel plate that has many temperature zones from red hot to just hot.
I am a very keen cook and the rocket stove complements my wood fired oven, between the two I can cook more or less anything.
Please ask if you want more information.

[fishalive12345]

Thanks for the reply Martyn. I just reread your experiences with the hotplate. Interesting the difference you saw between the cast riser and the ceramic fibre riser.
Where do you usually stand when cooking? Is the heat from the hotplate or the feed uncomfortable at all? I guess, as your hotplate is round, you have the advantage of moving to a different position if it gets too hot on the face or the legs.
Do you need to do a lot of tending to the fire when cooking?

[martyn]

I forgot it is not easy to put up photos on this site otherwise I would have shown you an updated picture but yes I would say it can get pretty warm if you are doing a lot of food but most chefs have to deal with that!
I feed the fire every 15 - 20 minutes but it is just not an issue for me and all part of the fun, I can regulate the heat by using different types and size of wood.
If we are catering for 20 plus people then there is room for three chefs.

[satamax]

permies.com/t/44806/Cobbling-workshop-heater-cooktop-oven

[fishalive12345]

Thanks to Martyn and Satamax for your replies.
I'm thinking that wood cookstoves are not really used that much for everyday cooking except, maybe, in situations where people don't have access to or don't want electricity or gas.

[josephcrawley]

I've cooked exclusively over wood for the past 15 years. I started with a Knox mealmaster cook stove. I later built a brick cook stove of my own design but the mealmaster was a better stove by far. Boiling water takes about 25 minutes from a cold start and meals take about a half hour at best.


What I would do different on my design is greatly reduce the heated mass. A cook stoves first job is to cook and heating up a bunch of brick is a real drag on that purpose. The oven is very slow to get to a usable temperature not so with the mealmaster since it was mostly light weight sheet metal.


Not sure if that helps. I've thought of a redesign with the interior surface insulted from the smoke path with vermiculite board to keep the heat in the core and hopefully the oven.

[fishalive12345]

Thanks for your answer Joseph.

15 years of experience says that your brick stove works.

Your story is another reminder that you don't really know what you're getting until you've finished your build. I'm planning/building a cookstove based on the Vortex stove core but with a different heat recovery system. The design includes a bypass so that it's possible to heat only the cooktop or the cooktop and the oven.

Will the oven work? Will the cooktop heat up quickly. Will the stove produce too much heat for the very small kitchen?

I'm trying to learn to use sketchup so I can post the design and get feedback before I continue. I've cast the panels for the core and got the bricks but am still working out other details. Sketchup is really helpful for that as it forces you to see things you've overlooked and to find solutions for problems you've been ignoring but it's a steep learning curve.

The balance between insulating materials and dense heat storing materials is another question. You're only going to know if you got it right for your stove, your location and your climate when you build it and it works well enough for you to use it every day.

[patamos]

Matt cooked on/in the one in his house all the time.
If your intention is a combination of year-round cooking and seasonal mass heating that is a very good design.
For summer cooking you might want to divert hot gasses straight up the flue pipe and harvest heat for hot water system off that eg. spiral of copper coils tied into a vented hot water tank.
You can also get flues with water jackets. but i cannot speak to the durability of that approach...

my 2c

[josephcrawley]

Mar 13, 2020 23:44:21 GMT -8 fishalive12345 said:

Thanks for your answer Joseph.

15 years of experience says that your brick stove works.

Your story is another reminder that you don't really know what you're getting until you've finished your build. I'm planning/building a cookstove based on the Vortex stove core but with a different heat recovery system. The design includes a bypass so that it's possible to heat only the cooktop or the cooktop and the oven.

Will the oven work? Will the cooktop heat up quickly. Will the stove produce too much heat for the very small kitchen?

I'm trying to learn to use sketchup so I can post the design and get feedback before I continue. I've cast the panels for the core and got the bricks but am still working out other details. Sketchup is really helpful for that as it forces you to see things you've overlooked and to find solutions for problems you've been ignoring but it's a steep learning curve.

The balance between insulating materials and dense heat storing materials is another question. You're only going to know if you got it right for your stove, your location and your climate when you build it and it works well enough for you to use it every day.

I would advise insulating everything in the cooking stream then trying to extract heat after. Perhaps a bell at the end of the smoke path. As far as I have seen no one here has built a well functioning cook stove. The hard thing being a good hot oven.

[fishalive12345]

Hi Joseph,
I also have the impression that building a successful oven is problematic but I can think back to a number of working examples.

Matt Walker has designed and built some examples that are documented in his videos. People have used the firebox as an oven as in Vortex's first cookstove. Yasin Gach has designed and built a number of cookstove oven combinations. Peter van de Bergh recently advised that a white oven situated over the secondary burn chamber of his double shoebox II (if I understood and remember correctly) would work.

All these examples give me hope that it is possible to successfully combine cooktop, oven and heat storage. As you say, it looks like the key to success is insulation in the right places to ensure that combustion is complete and that the hot gases are efficiently directed to where the heat is required. That and making sure that you follow the rules about system sizing, restrictions, materials and all the other things I've forgotten about! 

Anyway, looks like the heating season is starting to come to an end and that people have got other, more worrying matters in mind. Hope everyone and their loved ones stay warm and well.

[fishalive12345]

But, come to think of it, it's a good question.

Any experiences with ovens which not only work but are used regularly?

My daughter has recently started baking sourdough and we've gone from the experimental to the successful stage. Baked in an lpg gas oven. Hope to be baking in a usable wood fired oven by next winter.

[patamos]

If you build the masonry stove and find that it cooks/bakes okay, but otherwise gives off too much heat into the room too soon... you can always add a layer or two of clay plaster with a high ratio of shredded horse manure. I like to gather the pucks in summer when they are dry, then run them through a leaf shredder, then sift the loose fibres through a 1/8" (2mm) screen to remove the harder chunkies.

This fibre mixed with a good fire-clay is a very good insulative material in hotter regions as well. The fibre burns out, but the clay remains in place.
That said, 'lincoln fire clay' is not all that good for this application. I am fortunate to have local ground clay that works much better. So you will have to test...

my 2c

[fishalive12345]

Thanks for your suggestions Patamos.

I had originally considered the water heating option but have two reasons for not following up on it. Firstly, as I have no practical experience I didn't want to further complicate a build which already plans to cover hotplate, oven and heating.

I love the idea of flexibility and multiple functions but don't want to get lost along the way. I'd really like to be able to heat the bedroom immediately above the kitchen so thought about a hot water system with a radiator or a remote bell or a piped hot air system with a small fan.

I'm going to try to incorporate the potential of one or other of these but concentrate on getting the burn and recovery right first. The water heating idea defiinitely has the advantage that in the warmer season you can use otherwise wasted heat from your cooking to heat your dishwashing water but it's also maybe the easiest to get disasterously wrong.

The idea of controlling the room temperature by insulating the stove is something I will remember and apply if necessary.
Thanks

[whazzatt]

Hi Fishalive and co. In case my experience and setup can provide any food for thought:

I cook everyday on a small rocket stove. Have done so since mid-2012. It's called an Ecozoom Versa - I have no vested interest in naming it here.

It took me 4 years to more or less kill the first one, though it is still usable. The second one has lasted 4 years, and because this one is often under a roof, it has weathered better and should give me a couple more years' use. I have a new one already, safe 'n sound in the store room. I bought it a few years ago to replace the one presently in use, but it just keeps going.

I also use a rocket oven about twice a week - banana bread and cookies are baking as I type. If I'm using the rocket stove, everything gets cooked in a pot or two, or fried in a pan for that meal. Ditto the rocket oven - the entire meal must be an oven meal, e.g. pizza or roast vegetables and some meat. This means that I have to maintain only one flame at a time. Exceptions are sometimes made for banana bread and cookies!

A stainless steel kettle of water almost always goes on the flame, and even in the oven, after the cooking is done. One kettle is enough for the dishes, and one more is good for a body wash.

I also have a rocket mass heater in my cabin, and a rocket sauna. I enjoy having different units for different purposes. This is not to suggest that one shouldn't design and build multi-purpose units. Many members here have done so beautifully. I particularly like Matt Walker's indoor cook unit, but I'm in a climate that is too hot for that most of the year. Hence just a small TMH to get us through the colder months.

The Ecozoom Versa is easy to move about - I slide it from one side of a table to the other to get the best draw on the flame in different wind and weather conditions. It's a cheap start to cooking on open flames and will give one a lot to think about in terms of functionality planning for future setups.

In my case, previous scenarios revealed the importance of having a tap and basin very near the cook table on which the rocket stove is positioned, because I frequently need to fill and re-fill kettles.

The OP mentions the 'mainly men' factor in post 1. My partner does most of the cooking, and often starts and maintains all but the sauna unit. I mostly start the rocket stove fire while she is preparing ingredients - we are happy with this general division of labour! Our rustic setup is deliberately low-tech, and she is happy to get her hands dirty, which inevitably happens from handling the sooty pots. But the tap is right there, so we just wash hands a lot.

That's it for now.