Do you cook on a wood stove?

Is your primary cooking appliance your wood stove during the heating season? What do you make?

Mine is out of necessity, and just after a few weeks of intensive "non-voluntary woodstove cooking immersion" it really was not hard to get the hang of.  I use mine as a frying pan, slow cooker and grill.  Mostly slow cooker, I can make almost a weeks worth of suppers for myself and my pup this way in the cast Dutch oven.

I like it so much that I would like to continue using it in the non heating season but don't think that would work out so well, especially mid summer.

We do majority of our cooking on the Fisher MamaBear, the rest on propane. We heat almost all our water with wood, and we make our household water from snow as long as it is on the ground. The in between times can be lil'tough, as in the lake is frozen out front, but not enough snow, although we do typically try to keep a hole sawn in the ice to dip water.The otters seem to like it.
One of the Covid lessons was outages/shortages,so we have extended our propane by purchasing a 24vDC fridge tied into our solar.
Wood a bit much in summer, so we build  short(er) hot fires with poplar. We also heat some of our summer bathing water using sunshine and a big black canning pot perched on the old poplar stump we use for an outdoor shower.

Hi Tommy,
Spent my younger years growing up off-grid in South-Central BC, 40 miles (back when it was miles) North-East of Princeton at the end of a 20 mile one lane road to a remote lake. Not so remote anymore I hear, and quite populated with summer cabins now. Last time I checked into the homestead it was a subdivision, probably a town now. That's a good idea starting a fire to cook with poplar, I'm going to do that to extend the joy a little longer into the season. I heat here with birch which is pretty hot. Back when I was young we heated with  douglas, not so many fun memories of making firewood for dad... lol. We gain a different perspective once we get older.

Hopefully some folks will post some woodstove recipes.

Cheers,

I used to cook on top of the old wood stove - two heat"settings" hot at the front and much lower at the back - "boil" and "simmer"  New stove is 'boil' all over, even the kettle has to have a trivet to raise it above the top a bit.  However, having a left over sandstone floor tile 30cm approx square on the top I can get a crisp finish for the bottom of an otherwise baked in the regular oven pizza. (Stone gets put in place before the stove gets lit). I miss the old stove, even though the new one is better and more efficient at heating.

Being poor back then and somewhat rural, I cooked on a wood stove every winter for 20 years. We just had a simple steel box stove (used for house heating) that we had removed the protective lid off the top. So pots could be right on the steel top, or above it by using trivets. I didn’t mind cooking this way, and often wished I could have afforded a proper wood cook stove. Even though I have no use for one now, I often cast loving eyes upon one when we I see a wood burning kitchen cook stove someplace.

Yesterdays effort, my take on carrettiera.

when i bought this house in 1999  my mother tried to get me to change the insert for a pellet stove . i told her no because pellet stoves take electric and i could always get wood . glad i did i had all 6 of my siblings and my parents here to be warm when they lost electric a few times . i also like to cook on it i have stainless steal as well as cast iron pots and pans . i use the stainless steal ones for rice and stuff like that but if i want a good strew its cast iron .

i just boiled some eggs on it because both my oven and stove top burned out both new made in china breaks my heart how things no longer last i also have an old 100 yr Plus leahy incubator and it still works has attach ment for a small stove or use electric .

have a great day all im still learning this site .

Jill Dyer wrote:I used to cook on top of the old wood stove - two heat"settings" hot at the front and much lower at the back - "boil" and "simmer"  New stove is 'boil' all over, even the kettle has to have a trivet to raise it above the top a bit.  However, having a left over sandstone floor tile 30cm approx square on the top I can get a crisp finish for the bottom of an otherwise baked in the regular oven pizza. (Stone gets put in place before the stove gets lit). I miss the old stove, even though the new one is better and more efficient at heating.

Hi Jill,
Did you cook the pizza this way or just crisp the crust? I can't remember the last time I had a pizza and this intrigues me.

Tammy Norton wrote:when i bought this house in 1999  my mother tried to get me to change the insert for a pellet stove . i told her no because pellet stoves take electric and i could always get wood . glad i did i had all 6 of my siblings and my parents here to be warm when they lost electric a few times . i also like to cook on it i have stainless steal as well as cast iron pots and pans . i use the stainless steal ones for rice and stuff like that but if i want a good strew its cast iron .

i just boiled some eggs on it because both my oven and stove top burned out both new made in china breaks my heart how things no longer last i also have an old 100 yr Plus leahy incubator and it still works has attach ment for a small stove or use electric .

have a great day all im still learning this site .

Hi Tammy,

Can't beat a wood stove for sure, Curious about the incubator you have. I had preordered a chick heating plate good for 30 chicks and only uses 38 watts ( I'm on solar) it came in last week and was excited to get it.  Going to free range here and start with 20 to see how it goes. They will be arriving begining of May.

I don't use the woodstove for boiling, it makes it too hot in here. If I need a rolling boil I use the 2 burner propane stove.