The kitchen is by far the most important part of every home, the heart of all activities and a meeting point for the entire family.
Synonymous with life and nourishment, this room needs the stylistic decisions that combine modern design with functionality.
In recent years, the need to be able to combine more than one function with a single unit has become increasingly popular, thus performing more than one activity in a single solution. Based on this reasoning numerous people have contemplated purchasing wood-burning cookers, famous for being able to fulfil all the functions of the hobs and oven, but also to heat the surrounding rooms efficiently.
Let’s analyse every feature of these inexpensive thermal cookers and all the reasons why you need biomass combustion in your home!
Biomass combustion: definition and use
Biomass combustion entails heating rooms using completely natural primary materials, such as wood or pellets.
In recent years, the need and tendency to own systems capable of heating the home through the aid of biomass combustion has clearly increased.
Consider pellets, obtained from the trunk of the wood and its scraps, is used in stoves, fireplaces and thermal cookers in ever-increasing ways, especially preferred for its small size that guarantees easier reloading.
To fill this ever-growing customer demand, many trade-fairs and conferences are organised every year that gather the best-known companies in the sector.
It is important to mention the Progetto Fuoco, this sector’s leader in trade-fairs, which every year gathers more than 800 companies from all over Italy and from the rest of the world in a single place, ready to bestow any information, materials and aids concerning the combustion of biomass.
Wood-burning cookers: what they are and what features they have
Economic wood-burning cookers, also called thermal cookers, are a type of cooker that can also work as a boiler, giving the possibility of having hot water, cooking food and also heating rooms.
They are usually made up of a single block whose base consists of openable containers designed to collect residues and ventilate combustion.
In the middle there is, usually on the right, a quadrangular space dedicated to the oven, also containing the plates for placing the various pans.
On the left, there is the place dedicated to firewood, closed with a transparent tempered-glass ceramic door, letting you see inside the locker so that you’re always ready to add firewood when necessary.
Lastly, on the top, you can find the hob, where you can place pans and pots for cooking food on wood.
All the materials used have high conductive qualities and great resistance to wear and time.
Materials such as cast iron, earthenware, ceramic and steel are used for the construction of low-cost wood stoves, all fundamental materials that constitute and distinguish a quality wood-burning stove.
How wood stoves are used: the choice between wood and pellets
In order to make the best use of a thermal cooker, you must first buy the combustion material that best suits your needs.
For this type of cooker, including stoves and fireplaces, the most widely used fuels are wood or pellets.
The first has a generally much lower cost as well as more stable during the winter season compared to pellets.
It effectively manages to heat the house giving a more characteristic touch to the environment, having the opportunity to admire a live fire and wrapping round wood.
The second is generally more expensive than wood, on average it is estimated to cost almost 40% more. Its combustion is very efficient and on average much cleaner, but it cannot give the same atmosphere that burning wood releases.
The choice is on the buyer, based on their tastes and needs.
Whatever fuel you choose, once purchased, just load it into the special combustion chamber, equipped with materials with specific characteristics to contain heat.
If the fuel runs out, just open the door and load some more, taking care to keep the heat as low as possible to avoid unnecessary waste.
The combustion fumes are conveyed outside using an aeration system that is usually composed of a large tube that starts from the heating stove’s cooking surface.
Wood-burning cookers: a valuable choice for your kitchen
It is now increasingly common to buy a wood-burning stove instead of a gas, electric or induction cooker. This choice is guided by the desire to provide for a renewal of style and furnishings. These kitchens have numerous stylistic elements and accessories that can bring out the peculiarities of a home.
It has all the suitable elements to integrate harmoniously with the surrounding environment, an added value that immediately catches the eye.
For the most part, it is the cabins or mountain houses, but also for houses furnished in a rustic or vintage style, owning a wood-burning cooker, not only because it integrates perfectly with the rest of the typical furnishings, but also because it helps to recreate the right atmosphere.
Just think of how nice it could be to be in a mountain hut, in the heat while outside the cold and snow master the landscape.
Inside your house, you will have a warm and penetrating fire, which warms the body and is a real sight for the eyes.
Wood-burning cookers: a warmer house without the aid of heating
Wood-burning cookers, as we have already mentioned, work through the use of wood or pellets capable, through their combustion, of producing enough heat to warm the environment without other heating systems.
When cooking, you can use that heat for the entire kitchen, thus filling two needs in one go.
If, on the other hand, you need to heat every room, you need to carry out work to apply ventilation systems capable of transferring that heat to the various points of the house.
For this purpose, we could light the firewood in our kitchen even just to heat the rooms, using the entire structure as a real wood or pellet stove.
Wood-burning cookers: their positive impact on the environment
Many wood-fired thermal cookers can conquer you, not only for their many magnificent characteristics but also for their great positive impact on the environment.
These cookers produce energy and heat through the combustion of completely natural materials, whose consumption does not contribute to introducing harmful elements into the ecosystem.
The combustion cycle of wood does not introduce much CO2, giving the possibility of heating the home and cooking meals with a low environmental impact. Furthermore, by using natural materials such as wood, it is possible to avoid fossil fuels, whose reserves are unfortunately limited and whose processing and consumption introduces harmful elements into the environment for our delicate, already abundantly compromised ecosystem.
Wood stoves: all the advantages and disadvantages of having one
Owning a wood stove is certainly the best way to cook, heat and furnish your home most conveniently and sustainably.
However, are these the only reasons why numerous people choose it for their kitchens?
Certainly, wood-burning thermal cookers hide many other merits and defects, and we will analyse them together to be sure not to miss anything!
All the advantages of an economic wood-burning stove:
- Environmentally friendly, because it does not use any fossil energy, but only materials easily available in our ecosystem, without affecting non-renewable resources which are widely used for other systems with the same function.
- Savings on electricity and gas bills, thanks to the effective use of the thermal cookers both for cooking food and for heating the home, using wood or pellets as the main fuel instead of using gas or electricity.
- High energy efficiency thanks to the large combustion capacity and the temperatures it can reach.
The most efficient ones can even reach 800°. - A good choice of style, especially for buyers who love rustic or vintage styles.
When choosing furniture, especially for the most used environment in a home, you must be very careful to furnish your home with harmony and style, and wood-burning cookers can be a significant ideal furnishing accessory for this purpose. - Healthier meals thanks to more classic cooking, reminiscent of that carried out by our predecessors who used live fire to prepare delights and delicacies of all kinds.
- Possibility to stylishly furnish the environment in line with your personality, thanks to the large selection of different models, some also equipped with an oven, doors, knobs, decorations and accessories that can be completely customised to create a unique and unrepeatable cooker.
- Reduced management and maintenance costs, all you need to do is pay attention to the fuel load and keep the stove clean and well ventilated.
All the disadvantages of the economic wood-burning stove:
- Not suitable for everyone, especially for those who live in a house where the combustion fumes ventilation system cannot be installed to the outside, making it impossible to use a wood-burning stove, without filling the living area with disturbing fumes.
- Structure with a too filling visual impact, far bulkier than the modern design lines of the most used gas or induction cookers.
Adapting a kitchen with these characteristics is not as difficult as you think, thanks to the many models on the market that can satisfy every type of aesthetic and functional need. - Too much heat production in the warmer months.
Just think of the huge amount of heat that thermal cookers commonly produce, high enough to be able to heat an entire house.
It becomes a real problem in the hottest season when the temperatures are already very high and you try in every way to bring down the temperature in your home.
Using this cooker in summer means making it impossible to refresh the rooms during the preparation of food, making the normal actions that are performed daily in this place far more difficult.
Wood-fired cookers: the best choice for preparing traditional dishes
We have frequently heard, especially from the older family members, that foods cooked in their time on wood-burning cookers, far much more delicious than those we are eating today.
Even if they tried to propose the same recipes on gas or electric cookers, the dishes they made never reached or even came close to the taste of those prepared on a slow fire on wood-burning cookers.
So how is it possible to recreate those recipes praised with so much devotion?
Simple, just repropose those same recipes by cooking them exactly as they did, through the use of pellet or wood stoves!
It is now known that the utensils and the cooking method used, greatly influence the final result, especially if it is a dish that usually takes a long time to cook, such as legumes or a classic Italian sauce.
Meals prepared in wood-fired cookers smell of tradition and old memories, full of every possible attention and healthy as few can be.
Each bite given to a delicacy prepared with the heat from a live fire is a new experience and completely impossible to reproduce with other types of cookers.
Most of the merits of taste, however, go to the technique used on wood-burning thermo cookers called “slow cooking” that allows ingredients to bask in the seasonings for longer, flavouring while the temperature reaches the right degrees to cook it at its best.
To promote and remind the world how traditional dishes can regain their natural splendour prepared with old methods, projects have been prepared that report the ingredients and procedures for preparing excellent traditional dishes with the help of the wood-burning stove.
To be mentioned is certainly the “Cook Project” promoted by Pregetto Fuoco, at the Verona fair.
Through the Cook Project, we want to bring back the pleasure of cooking dishes evenly, respecting the times of each ingredient that can cook with the most suitable temperature, releasing all its natural goodness.
To tangibly support this idea, the best traditional recipes of each region of Italy have been made available, explained step-by-step starting from the choice of ingredients, and ending with its actual cooking.
A new, though more ancient, way of approaching food, allowing everyone to learn about new recipes from all over Italy but using the unmistakable wood-burning stove.
Wood-burning cookers: What to consider and how much to spend on one
The cost of thermal cookers can vary greatly based on the model, the quality of the materials, the modernity of the style and its customisation.
Before buying one, you must analyse the product’s main components.
To choose the right one, you must pay attention to these aspects:
- The size of the rooms, because in general, a heating stove is very bulky.
Thermal cookers have four functions, but they occupy far more space and need larger and fairly airy rooms. - The cost, which varies greatly from model to model, always based on what it can offer and the quality of the materials used for its construction.
In general, those of more modern construction, able to integrate perfectly with the furnishings while keeping up with the times, are far more expensive than the more common ones.
Consider that a more classic model can be purchased for € 450, while the most avant-garde models slowly increase in price, reaching a figure that is around € 3,500. - If we can own one, this is because being very similar to a real stove, it needs to bring together all the combustion fumes outside the inhabited areas.
To have a wood stove, you must own a villa or a cabin, or in any case any house where you can make holes for the passage of the smoke flue.
For those who live in apartments, it is difficult, almost impossible, to own one, precisely because it becomes more complicated to find a way to extract the fume outside. - Check that it is equipped with all the necessary accessories because many models are equipped with an oven, while others may not have one.
For this reason, it is necessary to understand if you intend to buy a separate oven, or if you want to get all these functionalities directly with the thermal cooker.
Furthermore, care must be taken to obtain a model with all the necessary accessories and a control panel where you can keep an eye on the temperature, above all to avoid unnecessary waste of heat.
Generally, it is possible to obtain an inexpensive wood stove, complete with an oven and all accessories, for under € 500.
Considering that this block contains a hob, oven and can be considered a real stove, you could call it a cheap and functional choice.
Wood stove: all the frequently asked questions
Many features of wood stoves have already been abundantly explained and described, but there are still some details to analyse.
Here are the most frequently asked questions about wood-burning cookers:
Is it possible to use wood-burning thermal cookers for both home heating and cooking?
The wood or pellet thermo cookers can guarantee excellent food cooking thanks to their controlled combustion. At the same time, the heat given off effectively heats the room, without needing other types of heating. With a single solution, you have two essential functions in a domestic environment.
How can I use my woodstove to heat the entire house?
Wood-burning thermal cookers can unquestionably heat an entire kitchen without any special assistance. The situation is different if we want to use it to heat multiple rooms in the house.
To make this possible, work will have to be carried out to create a plumbing system capable of conveying heat to every living area of the house.
Obviously, by implementing this system, we can take advantage of the heat every time we cook meals, being able to obtain two functions from a single item.
Just think that heat propagates from the cooker even four hours after it was turned off, continuing to heat the rooms without using any other fuel.
Thanks to this system, it will be possible to obtain considerable savings on bills over time.
Is it true that using a wood stove has a positive impact on the environment?
Commonly, in modern kitchens electric or induction hobs, or gas is used to heat and cook the dishes.
These two options imply the use of non-renewable energies that lead to the inevitable pollution of the delicate ecosystem.
The use of wood has a positive impact on the environment because its combustion does not alter the level of carbon dioxide in the air, thus not affecting the environment.
Can using a wood stove cooker be harmful to health?
Wood stoves are equipped with a special system that allows all the combustion fumes to be extracted directly outside the house.
For this essential reason, it is practically impossible for there to be negative effects on the health of family members.
Besides, the use of wood-burning cookers for home heating significantly contributes to reducing the humidity and water vapour that can form in the home through the use of other heating systems.
Finally, it can also be said that it significantly contributes to mitigating allergic attacks in those who are allergic to dust.
It is almost impossible for it to form inside, as happens with the classic radiators which, when turned on, release all the accumulated dust in places that are not easily accessible for cleaning.
How much can you save by using a wood stove?
The savings that can be obtained on gas and electricity are very high. Consider that for cooking food and for heating in the colder seasons you will no longer need to use other systems or different sources of energy.
The gas and electricity bills thus drop drastically, with a percentage that varies around 80% of the savings on general costs for both bills.
After analysing all the characteristics of these magnificent cookers capable of combining the past with modernity, it can be said that choosing a wood-burning stove could be the best choice of your life!
The available models of these cookers are many and always different, ready to satisfy every need for functionality without ever compromising on style.