Today we’re going to talk about how to cook on a wood stove. While I’m certainly enjoying the nice, warm weather that comes with the return of summer, I am missing my wood stove a bit. Sure, the break from having to tend it is nice. And I enjoy the reprieve from having to cut or carry firewood. But I do miss cooking on my wood stove this time of year.

During the winter months, I heat my place with my wood stove, so I cook almost exclusively on that. It’s a great energy saver. Since the wood stove is already on, I’m not wasting any extra energy or using electric (or in my case solar) to cook my meals. Just pop ’em on the wood stove, and let ’em cook. Once you get the hang of it, there are almost no limits to what you can cook with it.

So if you have a wood stove and are looking to save a little energy during the colder months, you might be wondering how to cook on a wood stove. Fortunately it’s fairly straightforward. It just takes a bit of practice to get used to the unpredictability of the heat.

You Have To Manually Regulate the Heat

When you cook on a wood stove, you can’t just set the oven or burner temperature as you would on a normal oven or cooktop. The wood stove temperature is a bit more uncontrollable. It goes up and down depending on how much air and wood you have in the firebox. So you have to make sure your stove stays hot enough to cook your meal.

If your stove has a thermometer this task is made easier. You can physically watch your stove get hotter or cooler. If your stove didn’t come with a built in thermometer, you can pick one up for less than $10 at your local hardware store. They have magnetized backs that stick right to your stove pipe. Place it about a foot and a half above the stovetop.

If the temperature starts to drop, put on more wood, or give the stove more air. If the temperature is rising too much, shut down the air. While it may seem a bit complicated the first few times, once you get the knack for it it’s pretty simple. In fact I’ve found that when I’m cooking in a pan, things are less likely to get stuck on. This is because the wood stove’s heat is more constant than a traditional burner’s. No quick temperature spikes. (It works for crafts too. Since I starting making my soap on my wood stove, I haven’t overcooked a single batch!).

Modern Wood Stoves

How you cook on your stove will of course depend on the type of wood stove you have. (Yes, you can cook on a modern wood stove just fine). If you have a larger stove with a two-level top surface, you can use those to regulate your temperature.

The higher level will be the cooler level as it’s further away from the interior flames. If your stove only has one level, you can still cook on it. You just might have to watch the pan a little more closely so the bottom doesn’t heat up too fast and bake on.

Modern wood stoves are made for heating, not cooking, so they aren’t built with ovens anymore. However, many companies sell inexpensive wood stove boxes that you can set on top of your wood stove. The stove heat heats up the box turning it into an “oven” to cook in. My parents had one these many years ago, and my mother was even able bake cakes with it.

Old Fashioned Wood Cook Stoves

Then of course there is the good old-fashioned cookstove, which is actually intended for cooking as well as home heating. The larger ones have a big top for cooking, an oven or two, and sometimes even a water reservoir so you can have hot water on demand. (Perfect if you’re living off the grid and don’t have a source of hot water).

I’ve always been fascinated by those big old cook stoves, but knew I could never fit one in my tiny little place. Plus they’re generally out of my price range. So when I went looking for a stove, I planned to get a smaller, modern cast iron wood stove, much like the one I’d been raised with at my parents’ house. My mother had been cooking soups and stews on her stove for years, so I knew I could as well.

The J.A. Roby

When I walked into the wood stove dealer, my plans immediately changed. I couldn’t believe it, but they had a half-size old-fashioned cook stove sitting right there in their show room! It was a J. A. Roby Rigel. The size was a little smaller than the small one Lucas McCain had in The Rifleman show. The salesman said they’d picked it up a convention just to have sitting in their showroom because it was cute. They never expected to actually sell one, but I knew it was exactly what I wanted.

It was love at first sight, the stove I’d always dreamed of. Not only was a it a good size for my small place, but it had a small oven (well, a food warmer actually, but I use it as an oven), a cast-iron cooking griddle, low clearance to combustibles (very important in small places), and a built in thermometer. And for bonus points, it was also cute as all getout. It even had an ash drawer (which so many wood stoves are built unfortunately without these days) so it was perfect for my needs. And since it was half the size of a normal cook stove, it was within my budget as well.

The Entire Top Is A Cooking Surface

The flat part of the stove where you’ll do most of your cooking is called “the hob”. If you have a modern stove, you won’t have any little circles cut into your stovetop. Your entire surface will be a cooking area. And if you have a double-level stove, then you’ll have the hotter lower area, and the slightly less hot upper area. You can put your pan anywhere on these flat areas to cook. However, the center of the surfaces will generally be the hotter points of the stove on a modern stove.

If you’re lucky enough to have an old-fashioned cook stove, there will be 2-6 circles cut into the top, sometimes called “eyes”. Those are not burners, as the entire stovetop is the cooking surface. It took me a long time to learn what those circles were for actually. When I was learning how to cook on a wood stove, everything I read told me that those circles weren’t burners, but no one told me what they were there for.

Finding Out What The Eyes Were For

The stove had come with a handle so the circles could be lifted out providing an easy way to clean the ashes off the top of the blanket. I figured that probably wasn’t the real reason for the circles though. Regular wood stoves have blankets in them too, but no circles on the stove top to allow for cleaning. So it didn’t seem likely that the circles on the cook stove were there just for cleaning.

I figured they had to be there for some sort of cooking reason, but the manual that came with the stove didn’t say what for. I also wasn’t able to find anywhere on the internet what cooking purpose they might have. Everyone just said they weren’t burners.

It wasn’t until I was watching an old episode of Gunsmoke (ok yes, I have a thing for westerns 😉 ), that I finally figured out what they were for. Of course all the stoves in those westerns are old-style cook stoves. So when I saw the Marshal use the handle, lift out one of the circles, and set the coffee pot over it, it suddenly dawned me. That was how to “turn up the burner” so to speak. Thank you Matt Dylan!

Using A Wood Cook Stove’s Circles

Since I finally learned the use of the circles, I’ve found boiling water so much easier. Just lift out the circle and put the pot over the hole so it gets more heat. You want to do this part quickly otherwise you’ll let a lot of smoke out of the stove. You’ll also have flames leaping up out of the hole, but as soon as you get the pot fully covering the hole, you’ll have both the smoke and the fire trapped safely inside. Also be sure to set the removed circles onto an old rag or something, as the undersides of the circles will be covered in black soot.

Make sure your pot is large enough to cover the hole entirely or the smoke will keep pouring out. Most cook stoves have holes of various sizes to accommodate different size pots. Even on my tiny little stove, which only has two holes, they’re different sizes. So I can change holes depending on what size pot I’m using.

The one thing about using the holes is that it’s a lot like cooking over an open fire. Those flames will lick the bottom of your pan creating a black sooty mess of the bottom. (Yeah, ask me how I found that out 😉 ). So it’s best to use cast iron cookware when you’re cooking over the open holes. However, regular stainless steel pans are fine if you’re cooking on the closed top. You just want to be sure they have a thick bottom so they don’t heat up too fast and scorch your food.

Actual Stovetop Cooking Is Very Easy

Whether you have a modern wood stove or an old fashioned cookstove, the actual cooking process is same as it would be on any gas or electric stovetop. Put your meal in your pan with a little water or oil so it doesn’t stick on, and then just pop it on the wood stove. Putting a cover over the pan will ensure the meal heats more evenly and doesn’t burn on the bottom. Again, you can regulate heat by moving the pan to hotter or cooler parts of the stove top, changing levels, or opening the holes, depending on your type of stove.

Keep an eye on your food like you normally would to make sure nothing sticks on. Test it now again to know when it’s done. Then just pull it off the stove and enjoy.

Cooking In The Oven

While cooking on the stovetop is pretty identical to cooking on a regular range, using a wood stove oven can be a bit trickier. This is because oven cooking requires more temperature control. As mentioned above, if you don’t have thermometer on your stove, get one. It’ll help you know when put on more wood or add/decrease the air to control the temperature.

My stove has a built in thermometer on the outside of the oven door, but I also bought a second one to stick inside the actual oven. The thermometer on the outside gives me a gauge to know how the stove is holding temperature without having to open the oven door all the time. But the interior thermometer gives me an accurate reading on what the temperature inside the oven actually is. (It’s usually hotter than what the exterior temperature says, but not always. So I like having the extra thermometer to ensure an accurate reading).

Bringing the oven temperature up is of course done by adding more wood and more air. Decreasing the oven temperature is done by shutting down the air. But if you need to drop the oven temperature faster, you can also open the oven door for a few minutes. I’ve had instances where I just wanted to warm up some leftovers without actually cooking them. So I’ll stick them in the wood stove oven with the door open to ensure they don’t get overheated.

Pans

You can use any type of pan in a wood stove oven that would use in a standard oven. However, I generally put a small wire rack in my wood stove oven when I’m cooking with glass. It has little feet that raises the pan off the oven bottom about a half an inch. It’s probably not entirely necessary, but I like to be cautious.

Someone once set a glass pan on a burner on my parents’ electric range, not realizing that burner was turned on. The glass pan heated up until it exploded. I was only a few feet from it and just narrowly missed being hit by the flying glass. Since then I’ve always been a little wary about setting a glass pan on any surface that’s even remotely hot. So I always set the wire rack in my oven before I cook in glass.

So hopefully you’ve learned a bit about how to cook on a wood stove from this article. And hopefully you’ll give it a try. It’s a great way to save energy if you’re already heating your house with a wood stove anyway.

If you want to start with something simple for your first time, try cooking something you would normally make in a crockpot. Stews, soups, mac and cheese, etc. are all all great, easy things to cook on a wood stove. You can just throw your ingredients in a pan, stick it on a cooler part of the wood stove, and then walk away. It’ll slow cook for hours without much tending. Delicious!

Once you’ve tried cooking on your wood stove, leave me a comment below and let me know what your favorite thing to make is!

By Amber Reifsteck, The Woodland Elf

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