Lunch Experiment with Rocket Stove

♦ May 14, 2012 ♦ Leave a comment

In general, I want to post things that are informative and to the point.  Today is a little different.  My daughter wanted a grilled cheese and hot dogs for lunch.  I thought, “Hey, the rocket stove can do this,” so I gathered what we needed (ignore the grill I placed the items on for the picture).

Lunch ingredients

Our first attempt on the rocket stove left the pan covered in black ash.  Just one of those things we didn’t think about ahead of time.

Soot from cooking on rocket stove

This time, I wrapped a cookie sheet in a layer of aluminum foil as a test.

Cookie sheet wrapped in foil

Not knowing how well the heat would disperse on the cookie sheet, I placed everything as close to the middle as possible.

The food was very tasty—rather difficult to ruin hot dogs.

Grilled cheese and hot dogs

But there are some lessons to be learned here (that most of you probably already knew):

  1. 1 layer of aluminum foil on cookie sheet—not enough.  Maybe we should just use the cookie sheet as a diffuser and cook on a pan on top of the cookie sheet?  My wife just suggested that we wrap the bottom of a pan in aluminum foil as a protective barrier from soot.
  2. Metal spatula for flipping on aluminum foil—asking for trouble.  Coat the aluminum foil with cooking spray?  Silicon/plastic spatula?
  3. Grilled cheese can burn in a blink of an eye.  (I took a picture of the first grilled cheese, which was cooked to perfection.  I gave that one to my daughter.  My wife and I ate the crispier ones.)  I’m an expert at burning the first side in the house, too, because I tend to forget about it.

In conclusion, yes, this takes a little more time and preparation than cooking it on the stove.  But, we used renewable fuel (we have lots of trees around) and we didn’t heat up the house on a warm spring day.  My daughter was happy with her lunch, so I would call it a success.

If anyone have any recommendations or experiences they would like to share for a newbie cooking lunch on a rocket stove, please post a comment.  I greatly appreciate it.

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