Many people have woodstoves for heat, but few use them for cooking. There are some great benefits to cooking on a wood stove including the flavors that come from the smoke and the ability to cook without electricity or gas. Cooking on a wood stove can also create an enjoyable family experience by teaching kids about how their food was cooked! The following tips will help you get started cooking like a chef on your own wood stove.
Why cook on a wood stove?
Efficiency
This heat source is already tossing warmth into the home...might as well use it for cooking meals, too!
Burning propane or cooking on an electric stove uses more energy. In fact, this is a tremendous advantage for wood cook stoves: not relying on electricity. So let's reduce that carbon footprint, people!
Also, it's comforting knowing that you don't have to rely on electricity. In the late '90s, a massive ice storm hit us in the Northeast. Our power outage lasted for 19 days! Fortunately, with a spring and a wood stove we had access to water, heat, and a way to cook!
Larger Cooking Area
With a gas or electric stove, you are limited by your burners: four for most, for others 6. Either way, on a regular stove, those are the only places you can place a pot. (Besides the oven!). It's kind of nice to be able to spread the spread over large hot surfaces
Aesthetics
Cooking on a wood stove makes a house a home. There's just something about the smell of wood smoke mingling with freshly baked bread, a simmering stew, and the hint of apple crisp. Spending a snowy winter day hunkered down next to a wood-burning stove seems about the best way to ward off the chills!
How do you cook on a wood-burning stove?
Heat Management
One key to producing delicious food on a wood cook stove is to manage the heat. I'm guilty of this, both on the wood stove and on the grill. On the grill, I barely wait for the charcoal to get hot because I'm in too much of a hurry to start cooking. Half the time the briquettes are just getting perfect when I'm taking off the food. I would get much steadier and even eat if I would just wait!
So, unlike a gas range, you have to plan ahead! Get that fire going early and get a good bed of coals going before you begin cooking.
Also...and this takes practice, you need to get to know your heat zones. You will find that you'll have hot spots and cool spots, and how to use them. For example, put that cast iron kettle right on the hot spot for heating water...no worries about it burning. If you're preparing something that needs less cooking time or low heat, (like sauteeing garlic!) however, place that pan on the cooler spot!
A good thermometer can help you map out the heating zone on your cooking surface.
When using a wood stove as your primary "cooking appliance," you can't just turn a knob to adjust your heat. Instead, you need to manage the fuel and the air. Need more heat? Add more wood and open up the air vents. Need only a little heat? Add thinner logs. Need less heat? Close down the air vents. If you want to drop the temperature, use a spray bottle of water and give the flames a bit of a blast. (I would be careful to not spray directly on the stove...cooling the surface too quickly might crack the metal).
Just remember, there you'll find significant lag time in temperature changes. Since your food and pans aren't in direct contact with flame, it takes longer for them to heat up. But, cast iron stoves and pots also retain heat, so even after you've "turned down the fire," so food will continue to cook. So take food off before it is done and let it "finish" off the heat.
Cleanliness
Besides heat management, I find cleanliness the next biggest challenge with a wood cook stove. Here it's all about containment: keeping soot and ash out of the food, and keeping food in the pans and off the wood stove! (Those things are tough to clean when they're hot all the time!)
The best way to keep dust out of the food is to reduce the number of times you need to add wood to the fire. I do this by taking the time to build up a solid bed of coals before I start cooking. I get a much more even heat...and they last longer than flames.
Also, use lids to keep oil in and ashes out...or a splatter screen if you want to see what you're cooking or allow moisture to escape if you are reducing a sauce!
If you have a baking oven, you may also want to cover food or double up and use a dutch oven inside your wood stove oven. Our masonry heater oven serves as a secondary combustion chamber, so we have to bake after the fire has gone out. And, we make tin-foil tents to cover everything to help keep the ash off.
Top Wood Stove Cooking Accessories
Insulated Mits
For anyone working around fire, coals, a hot stove, splattering grease, and hot cast iron, I recommend a good pair of insulated gloves.
With pretty much any glove you can't just sit there holding a cast iron pot for 10 minutes, but these gloves will allow you to reach over a hot wood stove, quickly move a burning log, rearrange those baked potatoes, and move some pots around!
Splatter Screen
To keep wood ash out and grease off the wood stove (as much as possible), I like this splatter screen.
On conventional splatter screens the wire often frays, and the plastic on the handles can melt when exposed to the larger cooing surfaces on wood stoves.
These silicone splatter screens stand up to the heater better and are easier to clean.
Dutch Oven
High-quality cookware like a classic cast-iron Dutch oven just gives you that good old-fashioned traditional feel. I find that once they've warmed up they cook food faster, trap heat longer, and perform a larger variety of roles.
I use mine as a stew pot, a warming oven, a regular oven, and a way to keep squirrels out of leftover blueberry crisp!
Cast Iron Frying Pan
I have to admit that on most stoves I like sauteeing with a Teflon frying pan. (Cast iron ones are pretty heavy to flip garlic and onions!), but I find them too flimsy for wood-burning stoves. They are more susceptible to heat fluctuations ever present in a wood cook stove and most have plastic handles that don't appreciate heat coming from the entire surface instead of just the burner.
Trivet
Trivets are really useful in general, and even more so when cooking on a wood stove. Tossing hot cast iron pans on the table or counter is a bad idea unless you have a rugged trivet.
As a great "keep warm: strategy you can place food on a trivet ( a loaf of bread, for example), then cover it with an upside-down Dutch Oven. The trivet helps keep the food up off the surface so it doesn't burn while the radiant heat from the Dutch keeps the bread butter-melting warm!
Thermometer
A wood cook stove doesn't have a temperature setting like a normal stove. You can't set it for 350 degrees then go fold laundry until it beeps.
You're also dealing with large surfaces...and most wood stoves vary widely in temperature...so a good thermometer provides information to help you predict your cooking times!
I like the laser ones...they allow you to measure multiple spots with just a squeeze of the trigger. (Plus, who doesn't enjoy watching the cat chase the little red dot around the floor!)
Kettle
Seems we always have the kettle on. Whether you're using it as a humidifier or just want to be ready to brew up some tea, having a ready source of hot water is a must for any kitchen.
Although I'm a traditionalist and enjoy the look of "plain ol" cast iron, I really like the aesthetic of this Japanese-style kettle!
Percolating coffee pot
If you're more into coffee, it's nice to smell it brewing and see the color turning robust brown with this percolator. Shiny metal just doesn't cut it for me, so I like this graniteware version!
Wood Cook Stoves
I wanted an expert opinion on new cookstoves on the market, so I stopped into my local stove shop, Buy the Fire, and asked what they recommended. Both guys in the shop (both named Nick!) said without question the Hearthstone Deva and the Nectre 550.
Hearthstone Deva Wood Stove
Hearthstone stoves are built in Vermont. They are crafted from cast iron, stainless steel, and have "vitreoceramic" tops.
"Vitreoceramic" is a composite of glass and ceramics that won't crack when faced with temperature fluctuations. (They make rocket nose cones with this stuff for re-entering the atmosphere!)
The Hearthstone Deva comes with an oven, an air control for regulating temperature, and one color option: black enamel!
It is rated at 46,000 BTUs, has a 1.6 cubic foot firebox and a 2.5 cubic foot oven.
Pros: The Deva stove is beautiful. Even with its only color: black enamel, the wave trim detail, and fire glass give it a sleek, elegant look.
Cons: While this is beautiful for wood stove cooking, it might not be great as a wood heat stove. As a small stove with only a 1.6 cubic foot firebox, it can only hold so much fire. To keep an area warm you'd have to be constantly burning wood.
Price: $5699
Nectre 550 Wood Stove
Nectre stoves are built in Australia. It's made from steel, with a black metallic finish, cast iron doors, and ceramic glass.
It's rated at 65,000.
The Nectre 550 wood stove has a firebrick lining for more thermal mass, air control, a 1/4" cook top (thick enough so it won't warp!), and a built-in thermometer.
Pros: With a higher heat output, this wood stove can function well both to cook food and for heating. It also has the option to add a hot water boiler
Cons: Not as attractive as the Deva...not as much detail. It's also significantly higher priced.
Price: $6150
FAQ
Can you cook on a wood burning stove?
I guess some people don't know. But yes, you can cook on a wood stove!
What can you cook on top of a wood burning stove?
While you can cook almost anything on a wood stove, I find hearty, comfort foods in cast iron cookware work best. For example, stews, simmering pasta sauces, and the like aren't "fussy." Plus, the lingering aroma of food with longer cook times adds to the quality of life. In addition, your wood stove oven is pretty much like a conventional oven. Homemade bread, muffins, casseroles, and all those yummy baked goods are all great! (In fact, Nick from Buy the Fire says that muffins and cinnamon rolls are the Sunday family tradition at his house!)
Can you cook pizza on a wood burning stove?
If you have a wood stove oven...for sure. Easily. If you only have a flat surface on top...it's a bit trickier. Take a pizza stone and set it on the stove top. Place a dutch oven on the stove, too, for a little while to preheat. When both are over 350 degrees, place the pizza on the stone and place the dutch oven turned upside down on top of the stone. When the crust is done and the cheese is melted...Voila!
Can you put a kettle on a wood burning stove?
Yes! Works great as a humidifier and a ready source of hot water for tea and hot chocolate.