← The homestead kitchen through the year H48-05 · Module 5 of 7 · Pages: 20 · Worksheets: 7

Cooking on a wood-burning range

How to light for cooking, use the hotplate by zones, tame the oven, bake bread, slow-cook with retained heat and work safely around the fire

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Cooking on a wood-burning range

In short

  • For cooking, make a small, hot fire of thin, dry wood (moisture below 20 %) and feed it little and often.
  • You change the temperature not with the fire but by moving the pot: it boils over the firebox, simmers towards the flue and keeps warm at the edge.
  • Check the oven with an oven thermometer; the gauge on the door is often 20–50 °C out. Turn the tin halfway through.
  • Retained heat (an insulated box) saves wood and time, but the food must stay above 60 °C (140 °F).
  • In a kitchen with a range: a CO alarm, a lid and a fire blanket for fat fires, children kept away from the hotplate.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. The range as a kitchen
  2. Wood for cooking
  3. The cooking fire
  4. The hotplate by zones
  5. The oven: how to tame it
  6. Bread in the range oven
  7. Pots and pans for the range
  8. Slow dishes and retained heat
  9. A day of cooking on the range
  10. Safety around the range
  11. Common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Cooking firewood calculator
  • Oven test
  • Cooking and firewood log
  • Range kitchen calendar
  • Sketch of my hotplate
  • Bread calculator
  • Wood-fired kitchen equipment

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