Sketch for a cob cooker

Modern day cooking has it's joys, instant heat and temperature control being among the top of the list.

Though I worry that people forget that most of the people in the world don't have access to microwaves and electric hobs.  They cook with fire or not at all.  For us, fire is a luxury, for others an existential necessity.

I love cooking over fire.  Be it smoking bacon in the BBQ or a week long adventure to the middle ages, I simply love it.  Fire cooking can be slow or fast.  In the end, it gives infinite more control and variation than any modern appliance.  The smoke flavours the food.  The nature of fire encourages slower cooking and more thoughtful meals.  Less food, but more value.  It's not about chard  hamburgers, it's about dancing with natural power and coaxing it to match your desires.  Given the right equipment and set up, cooking over fire on a daily basis would cause me no hardship.

Although some set ups would be easier than others.

Here's something I dreamt about last night.  Please forgive the drawing skills, and note this isn't to scale.

A stove, oven and hearth made from cob.  An outside setting or somewhere with good airflow (like a yurt with ventilation so the air can get in) would be the perfect setting for this.

On the left of the built up area is a stove like setting.  It could be one burner or two, this picture I just show one.  I could also do like a rocket stove and instal a chimney.  The fire goes in the hole at the side of the stove, and I put a pot on top of the hole above the fire (the burner) to boil or fry my food.

Because I adore baking bread, I figure a small oven would come in handy.  Place it to the right of the stove structure and make it like the old medieval ovens.  You place a fire inside the oven to heat up the surrounding walls, scrape out the fire then put the bread inside to bake with the residual heat.

As cob heats up and retains heat nicely, this little cooker could easily heat up the yurt long after the cookfire has gone out.

Not just the burner would be used for cooking, the large flat surface, would give different temperatures depending on where I put something.  So furthest away from the fire would be a nice warm place to rise bread, closer might be a good place for melting cheese or rendering fat.  I suspect with a lot of cooking, the oven area would get warm on it's own.  Not hot, but warm enough to dehydrate fruit and veg.

But what's the big area in front of the cooker?  A big, flat and partly walled area made from cob.  Like a tray.

Actually, it's exactly like a tray.

The biggest thing that worries me about cooking with fire, especially inside a structure, is...well... fire.  Fire is a um... fire hazard.  It sparks.  One needs to shovel ashes, sometimes hot ashes with glowing embers inside (like for the oven).  Having a large, practically fire proof place around where the fire lives is a good idea.  The walls would be higher near the oven and stove to protect against sparks and mistakes, but at least 4 inches around the whole tray space.

This tray area could also be used as a hearth space for roasting meat over a spit, or cooking larger amounts that need several different pots.  Or cooking in the summer when it's too difficult to cook outside but I don't want to heat up the big biomass that is the cob cooker.  Or it would make a good storage space for non-flammable items like cooking pots.


I don't know, it's a thought that came to me in a dream.  In theory it would be a marvelous setup that matches my desires and skills.  But a bit luxurious and not at all portable.