Cooking On A Wood Stove – What Do I Need?
COOKING ON A WOODSTOVE
Cooking anything on a tiny woodstove, even boiling a kettle on some stoves, can be a real challenge. It takes a little time and skill to perfect the balance of stove temperature with cooking timings and methods. For the best small wood burner cooking results you must acquire a knowledge of both your stove’s capabilities along with fuel knowledge. For example, wood logs made from ash and oak burn considerably longer than those say from poplar or pine.
This type of knowledge and skill was once commonplace but is now at least in the affluent West, a forgotten skill that must be relearnt. The decline in cooking using wood in the UK really began when small cooking ranges that were ever present in most homes began to burn coal rather than wood. This promoted a change in the cooking methods as food now had to be shielded from the acrid coal smoke. Spit roasting along with wood smoked fish and meats were replaced with pot roasting, pickling and boiled fish and meats. I will show you how to combine both techniques for the best tasting hygge giving food you can make.
Your woodstove provides you with a source of heat along with being a wonderful focal point for the room. By harnessing the free heat coming from the top or side of your stove you are able to also save money on gas or electricity by using your wood burner as a cooking stove.
You could even go for a small wood cookstove which has both an oven and a hotplate to broaden the cooking potential. I have designed a new small wood cookstove that will be the answer to all your woodturner cooking requirements. Read a little about my cookstove development here
Essential wood burner cooking kit
- A good heavy weight and one or two light weight pans with lids.
- A good wok, with a lid if possible or an improvised version if you can think of one!
- A good weighty saucepan or two.
- Enamel or similar small roasting/pie dishes.
- A set of two/three trivets.
- Oven mitt/gloves
- Dutch oven type heavy weight cooking pot.
- A griddle pan.
- A wide bottom kettle
