Cooking with hot rocks. Conducting tests, Incorporating cooking rocks into masonry stove.

I did some cooking on a hot rock today,  and I've decided that hot rocks will be the perfect addition to my rocket kitchen.

I intend to use hot rocks in combination with my cooktops, for quick and even grilling.

I'm using blueschist, a very fine grained and smooth metamorphic rock.

 Steaks,  French toast, grilled cheese and other items that are cooked on the grill , can be done quickly and easily,  using a hot rock on top. This of affords very quick, and even heating.

A nice hot rock is the perfect trivet for pots that are brought to the table.
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French toast takes less than three minutes.

I heated to the rock to 500 degrees F. It took four minutes to make grilled cheese.

Even the cheese that was melted directly on the rock was able to be cleaned up pretty well with the bread. It's similar to cooking on cast iron.

The cold,mashed potatoes were spread thinly on a preheated plate. It took three minutes to heat them with the hot rock.

Everything went well until I tried cooking eggs. They are not suited to the size of rock that was used. I made a mess.

Dale, Many years ago my family used to go to mountain man gatherings. One year there were a couple of ladies who demonstrated how native americans would cook soup using hot rocks that were dropped into an animal stomach filled with water etc. It was awesome.

This guy shows how to boil water using stones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_yTjl4N2Ls

Not that many would care but there is old Mongolian Marmot recipe which basically involves catching, skinning, and cleaning a marmot; stuffing its cavities with hot rocks, and then wrapping it back up in its own skin to steam. Sound pretty good. Maybe toss an onion or some garlic in there?

Sounds like a miniature version of haggis.

I probably won't make soup,  with hot rocks. I could see tossing one in from the oven to heat soup when the stove is not being fired.
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Tonight, I cooked turkey. As I listened to it sizzling on the rocks, I knew that I must once again suffer for my art.

These rocks were heated to 600F.

Concave rocks would make this much easier. Larger rocks would be much better as well.

After frying the pieces of meat on separate rocks, I piled it all together and then put the rocks on top of one another.

If you lean in, you can smell it and hear it sizzle. Close your eyes.

I'm feeling carnivorous.

Just have some care with regard to which rocks you use. Not all minerals are healthy and some rocks can blow up when heated (steam explosion, essentially).

There is real potential in this vein, but some pitfalls to be wary of too.

Good point, Peter.

Before deciding to use schist, I looked up the constituents and it doesn't seem to be an ore for any sort of heavy metal.

I'm going to try a forum that deals with geologic issues and see what they think.
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Here is my partially built masonry stove. The heat riser will be capped with a flat rock.
https://permies.com/t/43542/rocket-stoves/Dale-Rocket-Powered-Mass-Heater

It's in full burn in all of these photos. It only smoked and steamed when first fired.