Is Cooking Inside A Wood Stove A Good Idea?
You’ve heard of cooking on the stove top, now get ready for doing all the cooking inside the actual thing.
And why wouldn’t one want to give a shot at it? The wood is the exact same kind you would use in a fire pit, if not better.
Doing so is even free too, in some sense. Why would you want to fire up a range to cook your meals when the stove is just standing there, giving off the same heat you could use.
So if it all sounds that great, why does the idea sound kind of… unorthodox?
You could, but…
There is certainly no one stopping you from cooking any kind of grub you want right inside your beloved wood stove as that’s definitely more than possible, but let me put it this way, it’s not what the appliance is made for.
And by that I mean primarily safety.
Now don’t quote me on this, but from what I’ve gathered, it seems that the fat that gets released during cooking could end up coating the inside of your stove, and even collect in the flue.
And all of that may or may not end up increasing the possibility of catching a chimney fire.
But then again, there are plenty of folks on the interwebs who are like “oh no, I’ve been cooking like that for ages and never had a problem! The steaks come out beautifully too!”.
And they might be absolutely true. The temps inside of a wood stove reach huge levels, so I believe too that, I guess, it could burn off some of the grease residue that may end up collecting there from all that cooking. I mean, it can’t be as bad as actual creosote that does get up in there, right? That’s why we have to get our chimneys cleaned seasonally.
But even then, come on now. The idea just sounds crazy to me.
You have to also consider your own safety as well. Placing a cast iron pan, dutch oven or whatnot, inside a stove that is dangerously hot from all sides is simply dangerous.
You’ll have to get a good glove just to get that searing piece of cast iron out.
As a self respecting website owner of a firewood related website, I simply can’t sit here and tell you that you should go for it.
But maybe that’s because I’m not much of a cook? Hmm…
This seems like a terrible idea. There are wood cooking stoves, of course, but they have stove boxes that are out of the fire itself–so the grease splatter you mentioned wouldn’t go into the fire itself. Some people even use their cook stoves to heat their houses, so a cook stove can be considered dual use. A wood heating stove cannot (except maybe for stove top use).
Aside from the enhanced chimney fire potential, there’s the consideration of the Dutch oven or skillet shifting with the burning wood and a whole host of other potential disasters. Someone might do it and survive, but it’s nowhere near a good idea. And over all of these negatives is an overhanging question…what’s the gain? Why even try this?
Exactly.
This post is more about me playing the devil’s advocate and seeing what arguments can people present. And as it seems, you are on the same boat as me when it comes to this whole “cooking inside the stove” deal.
You can bake a pie Bake a cake if you have a dutch oven You can put it inside if it’s not real fired up then put coals on top of the lid just don’t let the fire be too hot I would not suggest you fry anything inside but you can cook a chicken in a dutch oven make sure you put a trivet in the bottom of the Dutch oven and cover with coals you can use a dutch oven also in a fireplace A fireplace is easier more versatile to cook off of Check out cooking in 1776
If you were to cook a steak in a pan with no lid so that grease could splatter around, your steak would come out tasting smokey in a bad way. Like, with an undercurrent of creosote flavor. Open cooking has to be done right in the door where fresh air passes over the pan, but mostly one only bakes, or cooks with the lid on, inside the pan. Use welding gloves to put the pan in or out. The main hazard is in frying – oil reaches the flame point more frequently.