Do you prefer white or black rocket ovens?

The kickstarter is over but the Rocket Oven Documentary is available for sale. Great opportunity to build your own rocket oven!



If you don't know a white oven is one where the heat reaches the food but smoke does not. This way you can cook your food without having a smokey flavor added to it - which is awesome for things like pie! A black rocket oven does not keep the smoke away from the food so you get that smokey flavor which can be great for other types of food such as roasted chicken!

So do you prefer a white or a black rocket oven? Or do you want to build both?

The kickstarter is over but the Rocket Oven Documentary is available for sale. This documentary is all about the white rocket oven which I think is awesome and this is the type that I'm most interested in. But I also have a BBQ and I think for some foods a black oven would be awesome. So I think I will eventually end up building a black oven too but the white rocket oven would be the first since it would by far get the most use.



So what do you prefer a white or black rocket oven? Or both?

Comment below and don't forget to check out the Rocket Oven Documentary!

I was keen to help with this project, but the freight of $25 US for a DVD to Australia is just too much to bear. I thought the feedback may be helpful
regards

White ovens are way to slow to heat. They are practical only with a mass heater.  

I would say i preffer black. But with a powerful rocket. Which if running properly, doesn't smoke by the way.

White oven, definitely--it's far more versitile!

This reminds me of an episode of BBC's Victorian Farm, which my son and I just watched. In it, they got a coal oven since that was the technology of the time period. Ruth Goodman was really worried about the learning curve in using the coal oven. Because, before the invention of the coal oven, people generally tried to get that wood smoke flavor into their food. Coal smoke, however, was nasty, and so cooking had to be reinvented to a large degree to figure out how to keep that smoke OUT of the food.

Here's the video. It should start a bit before where the discussion of coal and wood smoke:



It makes me wonder if they tried to get that wood smoke flavor into their sweet dishes, as well as their savory ones. One thing I recently learned is that, in medieval times, there wasn't the same dicotomy between sweet and savory that western pallets have today. Beef might be cooked with cinnamon and fruit, for example. Yet, when spices became more common, the rich decided to make their food more distint from the masses...by making it more "bland"--savory spices with savory foods, sweet with sweet foods. Here's an NPR article about it: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/how-snobbery-helped-take-the-spice-out-of-european-cooking

This all has me wondering if, perhaps, a wood smoke flavored apple pie might actually be a whole lot better than we think--we're just too trained to associate that smoke flavor with savory foods!

It would be great to have the white oven, with the option of adding wood smoke- best of both worlds.
Erica mentioned something about adding some wood chips in the white oven to add smoke flavor. Has anyone tried that? It would be great to hear how that works out in the white rocket ovens.
It makes sense, I often add a handful soaked mesquite wood chips on top of the hot coals in my grill to add that smokey flavor.

For indoor use I would only want a white oven. For outdoor, I think I would prefer something that is a white oven but figure out a way where I could occasionally include some woodchips and get a bit of a smokey flavour. Or I'd just build a separate smoker.

I like them both. The one for baking "clean" without the extra flavor of smoke and then a black one specifically for smoked foods. The idea of a pie baked in a black oven to add extra flavor is a sweet idea.

@John C Daley - you can go for the $25 dollar level and get an HD download of the video. There are lower options for other qualities of video as well. That also gets you some other candy as well.

Slight preference for white due to versatility, but I love the simplicity and adaptability of construction of a black Rocket Oven

I personally would be using this as a replacement for a conventional oven, building it indoors in (I hope) my future Oehler/PAHS/wofati home. Knowing my cooking skills don't leave much room for error, and my fire building skills will need to ramp up with practice, I see a black oven ruining more food under my care than a white oven, at least until my learning curve catches up.

So initially I would be aiming for a white oven indoors, and perhaps adding another outdoor oven for the summer cooking to keep it cooler inside.

White oven for me, because I prefer sweet baked goods, and also dislike smoky food.

Black

Sounds like I'll be trying both. Probably white first.

I like the idea of building both types - I like that the design shown in the kickstarter is not that big which would make it fairly easy to fit two in an outdoor kitchen.

I just had a BBQ at my place tonight and I was wishing I had a rocket setup instead...

Also, if you missed out on the kickstarter the Rocket Oven Documentary is now available for sale!

Black oven all the way for me.

I have installed one for commercial use.  We roast paprika, tomatoes, potatoes , pumkins, eggplants to make smoked paprika, smoked tomatoes, pumkin pies,  roast potato mash, Baingan bharta etc.

That smokey flavour is the heart and soul of the food that we sell.

Kiran Patil wrote:Black oven all the way for me.

I have installed one for commercial use.  We roast paprika, tomatoes, potatoes , pumkins, eggplants to make smoked paprika, smoked tomatoes, pumkin pies,  roast potato mash, Baingan bharta etc.

That smokey flavour is the heart and soul of the food that we sell.

Oh interesting! Have you posted photos or details about your oven anywhere? I'd love to learn about it.

(I'm thinking of installing some kind of wood-fired outdoor oven or indoor rocket stove later this year and am still in the idea phase)

Haven't posted it. Will post here on my next visit to the factory.

This new video excerpt explains the difference between white and black rocket ovens and a lot of other basics for beginners.
https://youtu.be/kHjGQMoxFI4