Cookin' With Coal

Sunny Boy wrote:

corey wrote:Next time it gets cold out I believe it's time to cook a big pot of soup beans on to of my Ashley. Food looks good guys.

Check often until you learn what temps the stove top is capable of producing inside the cook ware. It's a bit different than cooking on a modern gas, or electric stove. You can't see flame, or glowing electric coils, or have a dial to set the stove top heat to, so it's tough to know how hot the stove top really is. That's why I keep an IR gun near the kitchen range to use during cooking on the stove top. Old timers used to spit on the stove top and learned how hot it was by how fast the spit reacted to the heat. With my upbringing, that seems like major disrespect to the stove to me !

If your running the stove hotter during really cold days, you may need to put the pot/pan up on something like a trivet, or something else that can withstand high temps. Sometimes it only takes something as thin as a piece of wire grill from like a Weber BBQ grill to lower the pot temps enough to keep food from burning during a long cooking spell. One stove owner used rolled and twisted piece of aluminum foil to make a coil to sit the pot on. Small chain laid in a coil can work, too.

And don't assume all of the top surface is the same temp. It can vary and that can help by giving you a choice of different areas to cook on.

Paul

I could probably push burning coal to one end of the stove to controll cook temp also.

Keep in mind that moving the coal to one end will affect how the stove acts as a heating stove. You have many other options so you don't need to do that.

However, by using trivets, small wire grills, a frying pan placed upside down, and such, you can still have the stove heat the house by just using more "localized control" such as just the small area right under the pot/pan. You get your house heat and still get to control how much heat reaches the pot/pan for cooking.

You'd be surprised how little an air gap is needed to lower the stove's surface temp 75 -100 degrees, or more. Just sitting a cast iron pot into a cast iron frying pan can lower the cooking temp in the pot.

Taking that a step further, putting a small wire grill in the bottom of the pan, set the pot on that, and then add water to the pan up to the level of the pot, to make it act like a double boiler, will lower the cooking temps plus make it heat the pot bottom very evenly. And it will add moisture to the room air.

Just watch that nothing boils over. Or then you and your family's noses will tell you just how quickly the heat from the stove is traveling through the house.

Paul

Sounds like some good ideas. I have an old grill I could use as a trivet.

Fantastic. I've thought of it vaguely, but now I'm thinking seriously. If I can run things efficiently with the kitten and the big one I'm going to try to find a range. I love the idea. Interesting post.

Wren wrote:Fantastic. I've thought of it vaguely, but now I'm thinking seriously. If I can run things efficiently with the kitten and the big one I'm going to try to find a range. I love the idea. Interesting post.

There are many good quality cast iron ranges all over the northeast. Glenwood, Clarion, Crawford, Fairmount, Magee, Quaker, and more.

And they vary in size, but only by a few inches - no where near as much as modern ranges vary.

A big thing to watch for is that ranges that you'll find closest to you seem more likely to have wood grates. They don't work well with coal. However, good coal grates will work with wood.

And some of the duplex, or dockash type grates are ok, but not the best for ease of once a day breaking up and clearing out clinkers before they become too firm and are a problem to remove.

Triangular, or what some call "triplex" or "prismatic" grates, do a very good job of busting up clinkers. Same type of grates that are in your 116.

Paul

A simple dinner - home grown pork loin and basic veggies oven baked.

LBrookm wrote:A simple dinner - home grown pork loin and basic veggies oven baked.

Home grown - not only looks good, but that makes it all the better !!!

Good to start out cooking on a coal/wood stove with something simple and that you know well. Like friend says, "Little steps for little feet - are less likely to trip."

As you learn what the fire and the dampers can/can't do, progressing on to more complex cooking is easier without so many unknown variables thrown in.

For the sake of viewers with delicate stomachs I don't ever post about some of my earliest attempts at cooking on my range.

Paul

AND, I for one--thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

freetown fred wrote:AND, I for one--thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You,..... and the NY board of health !

Paul

With cooking comes, cleaning. And with cleaning comes lots of wet dish towels.

The little Sunny originally came with one towel rod for drying towels. It was missing when we bought the range. Wilson found me an original Glenwood range rod. I re-plated the nickel handle and made a new stainless steel rod for it. While it works very well, it never seems to be enough to keep up with the number of towels needing to be dried.

Some of the larger, fancier ranges have two rods. And when Melissa and I both are cooking we seem to use towels in pairs. So, since there is room on the edge of the cook top, I decided to set the Sunny up with two rods also.

I found a supplier of the nickel plated coil handles and using more stainless steel rod, made two matching ones. The original rod was kinda short for the towels we use, so I made it's replacement longer. Then Santa brought even larger towels for Christmas, so I added a couple of inches more length to the new pair of rods. And when not needed they easily drop down into the mounting holes out of the way.

But what to do with the first shorter rod? I thought of mounting it to the right end of the mantel shelf like Randy's Clarion range. However, it just happens that the rod can hook into the filigree holes in the warming shelves. So now we have three towel rods, no damp towels taking up counter space waiting to dry, and "gliding the lily" with more bling.

Paul

Thanx for the tour Paul.

Very nice !! Efficiency at it's best !!

Paul, with the towels that close to the firebox, I would use one of those spring closepins to make sure the towels don't slide off the rod. My Mom had an Uncle's family home burn down with his wife and baby in it. At the demands of my Mom, I always use one of those closepins on the towels.

Safety thought for the day!

Randy

Randy,

That was my concern, also.

You can't see it from that angle in my pix, but in some old pix of ranges, I noticed that the rods "droop" slightly away from the range. At first I thought it was mistake of some kind, or the result of too much weight put on the rods. However, the more pictures I found, including ads by Glenwood, they all showed the same amount of droop. And the towel rod on Melissa's family's Acorn range did the same.

Later on, I was able to get an original Glenwood towel rod from Wilson. When I installed it in my range it had the same amount of droop.

With so many examples it would have to be intentional for the angle of droop to be so consistent. That's when the light came on and I was sure they are made that way to prevent the towels being able to move closer to the stove.

So when I made the three rods I have now, I made sure that they all have that same amount of droop that makes it so that the towels can only slide away from the range, not uphill toward the range.

With at least one rod in use for a few months now, even with lots of opening/closing the oven door and the round covers to add coal, plus shaking ashes and empting the ash pan, through all that the towels don't move at all. And the coil spring ends prevent the towels from sliding off the end.

Paul

Double post.