how much harder is it to cook over a fireplace?

>>8458229
I only have a one story home, and it's cold on the roof.

It depends how tall you are.

>>8458229
shouldnt be any harder than cooking over an actual camp fire.

just dont use those weird chemical logs that most people use in their fireplace.

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did people actually have 3 fires a day for each meal or only 1 fire that they kept going or what?

Hearth cooking is a constant fight for even heating (just like cooking over a wood stove). If you're really vigilant and keep turning things and feeding the fire, the payoff is awesome because food cooked over a real wood fire is heaven.

>>8458268
When you cook all of your food over a fire, it's an all-day task (which is why women belong in the kitchen), so you keep the fire going.

>>8458279
what about in the summer when its fucking hot surely they didn't keep a fire going 12 hours a day?

>>8458283
i think people were more adapted to the climate since they didnt really have air conditioning.

>>8458268
>snows overnight
>you die.
genius house building there.

>>8458319
why would you die from snow?

>>8458279
It's really not that difficult or time-consuming to build a fire, assuming you have an adequate fuel supply.

>>8458319
this could be somewhere like northern california where it seldom snows let alone in quantities large enough to trap you in your home.

>>8458283
Cooking was done outside in the summer. Large houses even had 'summer kitchens', which would be off the back of the house with a little covered walkway.

t. historical interpreter/wood stove cookery BOSS circa 1870's.

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>>8458392
ah that makes sense, sounds comfy

shit lol

so what are some of the quirks of cooking over a wood stove or over direct fire? how much cooking is done indirectly?

how the fuck did people clean pans and pots without high octane dishwashing soap and hot running water on tap?

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Walter makes good shit with it desu

>>8458404
you may be a little mistaken about the actual techniques used in open fire cooking. many dishes were one pot stuff, like stews. depending on what era you're talking about, people didn't even own much cooking utensils. as for cleaning, compare it to seasoned cast iron pans. you don't clean it until it's sterile, just wash it out a bit and don't care about perfect cleanliness

>>8458404
It is comfy! Kind of... the summer kitchen where I learned to cook got up to 120 deg. F on a regular basis, and that was standing away from the wood stove.

Like I said - the biggest quirk is unevenness of heating. If you bake something in the oven of a wood stove, it has to be turned every three minutes or it will burn on one side and be raw on the other. Same goes for cooking anything over the hearth.

>How much cooking is done indirectly?
What do you mean by this?

>how the fuck did people clean pans and pots without high octane dishwashing soap and hot running water on tap?
AND a lack of steel wool. But boar bristle brushes were a thing. Other than that... elbow grease. And lye soap can be pretty caustic. You make it work.

>>8458429
You may be a little mistaken about eating practices in Victorian America. It was common to have upwards of ten different dishes on the table for the noon meal. Breakfast would be biscuits, eggs, some meat, and the like and dinner would be lighter. Leftovers or soup and bread.

>>8458431
thanks for this.


by indirect i mean not in an oven but not necessarily over the heat either i.e. off to the side of a hearth

>>8458434
>mistaken about eating practices in Victorian America
yeah sorry about that, i was just giving some input from the last few hundred years in europe. i should really have said that before posting so things don't get mixed up. also, i was more about an actual open fireplace and not an actual wood stove. my bad

>>8458435
Ohhhh. That's exactly how you get temperature control - you move it further away. You have to learn how to tell the temperature of a cooking fire in seconds. For example, a 10 second fire would be a pretty cold one (you can hold your arm close to it for ten seconds). A hotter fire would be 2-3 seconds. You get the hang of where to put things based upon how quickly the hair singes off your arms, basically. haha Off to the side of the hearth is great for proofing breads and the like.

>>8458453
Fair enough. Wood stoves within the home definitely allowed people to get a more varied diet. The first wood stoves were actually not attached to the wall as we think of them now; they were instead drug into the hearth so as to use the flue for exhaust. I guess that's why people had so many kids back then... cast iron stoves are heavy.

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>>8458337
>northern california where it seldom snows

It snows plenty in northern California. Never heard of Lassen or Mt. Shasta?

>>8458462

Nothing exists between Sacramento and PDX.

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>>8458404
In the olden days (before the germ theory, for instance) people probably weren't so picky about cleaning things generally. The idea of sparkling stainless pans is pretty recent.

It was kept sanitary (or not) by burning all the bacteria to ashes.

Ashes were probably a large part of the seasoning, too, but that's another story.

>>8459044
why does this make me nostalgic

i want to go back

and i never was there in the first place

https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson/videos

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>>8459119
holy shit thanks this looks awesome

>>8459044
Can confirm, although ash doesn't really contribute to taste either way. Nor anything else, except specks in the looks. Just a harmless quirks.

The difference between cooking over fire and on wood-fired stovetop is heat regulation. Over fire it's hard to keep the heat steady. The fire is really moody - air flow regulating flame pretty much depends on the flame strength so you need to care about how you place the logs or you'll keep going between embers and roaring fire.

In a wood stove you first have the little door with a slider that allows more or less air in, making the flame roughly constant, and then you can remove some segments of the plate to get more or less of the pot over direct fire, move it to a cooler area to keep it simmering, or move to the far back to keep it warm. Just add fuel periodically, no need to shuffle the logs all the time to keep the same heat.

Also reduces amount of ash in food, though as I said, that's nothing to worry about except for the looks.

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BTW, goulash over garden fireplace, some 2 years ago.

>>8459149
Nice pupper

>>8459149
Nice setup.

>>8458319
Look at this stupid fucking git, living where it snows. Kill yourself, Chilly Billy.

>>8458404
>those white boi carrots
we've really come a long way