Cook With a Wood Stove

So, you want to cook on a wood burning stove. Perhaps the power has gone out, you don't have electricity or gas where you live or you just want to have some fun. Well here's what you need to get cooking.

Steps

 * 1)  First you'll need a wood stove to cook on. If you already have one, great. Move onto the next step. If not you will need to acquire one. Perhaps you have friends and family who have one they don't want. Look online at sites such as, ebay.com, Craigslist and Google. Or go to a store in person.
 * 2)  You now need to clean the stove. This will need to be done if it hasn't been used recently, is completely new, or has an excess ash buildup.
 * 3)  So you have a stove, it's clean. What do you do now? Get your ingredients ready. There's nothing worse than having the perfect fire, if you don't have anything to cook on it. So marinade your meat, defrost food etc.
 * 4)  Now you are ready to get the fire ready. For the absolute beginner, here is a rough guide as to how much wood you should need. Get a nice pile of wood and now make two others. This should be enough wood for a nights cooking. But you will also need tinder and kindling. Tinder is what catches on fire when you put your match to it. It is mostly, newspaper, dry grass, and dryer lint. So scrunch up some newspaper, and make a small pile of it in the bottom of your wood stove. Then, get two medium sized logs, one on each side of the tinder. Then get some pencil sized twigs, and lay them across the lop of the logs. The twigs are your kindling. Kindling is what gets set on fire by the tinder and what sets the logs on fire. Now make sure all flues and dampers are fully open. Light a match, and hold it a centimetre or two underneath the tinder, the tinder should be alight in a few seconds. Shut the door, and wait for the kindling to catch. You might need to add a bit more kindling at this point. When you have a nice bed of coals, you're ready to start cooking.
 * 5) Get out a pan or pot, and start cooking. Wood stoves are slightly harder to cook on than gas stoves, as the temperature is controlled by the amount of wood you put in and the damper setting.
 * 6)  When you are finished, eat your meal.
 * 7)  Then close the flue and damper and let the fire go out.
 * 8)  Wash up all of your dirty dishes.

Tips

 * Get some practice in firelighting before attempting this.
 * You may need to use the damper to control the heat and how much wood is burned.
 * It is recommended that you have prior experience in cooking before cooking on a wood stove.
 * If you don't have a water heater, you should keep a large pot of water on the stove at all times to assist cleaning up, making tea/coffee etc.

Warnings

 * Fire is dangerous. Many people have been burnt, burnt down their houses and otherwise harmed something or other using fire. Exercise extreme caution at all times.
 * Do not attempt to cook or light a fire if you are drunk or under the influence of drugs.

Things You'll Need

 * Food to cook
 * Fire wood
 * Matches
 * Newspaper
 * Wood burning stove
 * Common Sense