Saturday, November 17, 2012

Cooking on a wood stove

Earlier this evening, I put a big pot of pinto beans on the wood stove to cook. They are already about halfway done. I am loving this wood stove so much already. I am wondering if I can bake potatoes in the ash pan? Or maybe even a roast on top. I guess I could use the wood stove just like a regular stove. This could be a real electricity saver for us.

How about some ideas and advice on cooking on a wood stove from all you out there who have done this. What all have you cooked or even baked on yours?

13 comments:

Teri said...

Hi Kris,
I cooked on one for years ... Now I do in the winter or if I need more oven. The only thing I can tell you if you have an oven is rotate, rotate, rotate ... first lesson learned years ago! The very first thing I baked was a spice cake ... well, lets just say,the very first lesson learned was a spice cake. We have had a wood cook stove for the past 20+ years. I don't ever want to be without one!
Have fun!
Teri

Kristin said...

We have an insert type stove for our fireplace. While there is enough of a ledge for me to put a put on, I'm scared my kids will manage to knock it off so have never tried to cook on it. They're getting older now, maybe it's time to try tonight.

The heat's on in the house this morning (set at 61) because I didn't light the fire last night. It was hard to justify when it was 66 degrees outside.

Kris said...

I let ours go out because it's going to be 65 all this week and only in the high 30-40's at night. It was quite hot in here. And I would rather save the wood for when it actually gets cold.

We had an insert at our other house too. Not much room to cook. But maybe to keep things warm.

Kris said...

Teri, I really wanted a Vermont Bun oven. They are amazing wood stoves with an oven under the wood stove. But they are about $3000. The pinto beans I cooked were really good. And they boiled, it was that hot. I don't think I can bake with this stove. But maybe put some things under in the ash bin.

Teri said...

Kris,
I have a Flame View ... it is one of the new Margin stoves ... really efficent.
We had the Margin Gem but I wanted an all white stove with more heat vents ..
We heat with wood only, so our stoves have to pull double duty a lot.
This stove was 3500 ... but again, out heating unit. We have NO backup. They are well worth the investment.

Anonymous said...

Hi Kris - I have no wood stove experience. But Jane over at Hard Work Homestead has some experiences and here are some links that might help you.

http://hardworkhomestead.blogspot.com/2011/08/now-i-see-why.html
http://hardworkhomestead.blogspot.com/2011/08/canners-cookstoves-and-conundrums.html
http://hardworkhomestead.blogspot.com/2012/02/lets-talk-about-gas.html
http://hardworkhomestead.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-new-yogurt-maker.html

SweetLand Farm said...

Honestly I've never cooked on my wood stove. I have a SIL that does a lot though!

Anonymous said...

I cook often on the top of my small airtight. Soups and stews, and heating up leftovers are possible, and when the top of the stove is too hot, just raising the pot by putting it on top of a cooling rack works. It is possible(I found out during a protracted outage that lasted almost two weeks) to bake or roast if you have a very large dutch oven which you can invert over and completely cover the cooling rack - pop your item to be baked, in a pan under the inverted dutch oven - not perfect but it works pretty well. I too would love a Vermont bunbaker, but a lot of other priorities are in front of it on my wish list!!

Kris said...

Hello. Thank you for stopping by and telling me how you use your wood stove. I'll write a post about it soon. I love your blog and am glad to see that even in Nova Scotia people are concerned about buying local!

Kris said...

Thank you, Emily!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for visiting my blog Kris. I meant to specify that anything to be baked be set on top of the cooling rack, my biscuits and baked potatoes came out edible if not the best I've ever made - lol!
Nova Scotia is still one of the places that has a relatively active rural culture where the emphasis is coming through on local and green to enhance the sustainability of our rural populations. Unlike many other parts of Canada and the US we still have roughly 50% of our population defined as rural. I'd like to see a much more creative emphasis on entrepreneurial skills development in the educational lead up to school leaving. We have always known how to survive by having many streams of income and through trade and barter, and maybe just maybe our provincial government is seeing this as a plus.

Kris said...

Yes, I sure wish our government felt the same as yours.

Serge said...

Since wood stoves like this one would easily heat up a room, it would definitely help save on your expenses in electricity.