This Rocket Cookstove Is Hot Stuff!

If you search the web, you will learn that humans began to cook their food with fire a long time ago. Indeed, you might expect that there would be nothing new in the world of  flame-based cookery. Fortunately [Bongodrummer] didn’t get that particular memo, because he’s created a rather unusual rocket stove griddle that is capable of cooking a significant quantity of food.

A rocket stove is designed to achieve as efficient use of energy as possible by achieving the most complete burn of high surface area fuel. It features a small combustion area and a chimney with supplementary air feed to ensure that exhaust gasses also burn. This one feeds all those hot gasses directly to the griddle, before taking them away up a pair of flues. As an added bonus there is a dome attachment for a pizza oven, made when a previous project had some left-over building material. Take a look at the comprehensive build video below the break.

Perhaps alarmingly the combustion chamber and chimney are made from a gas cylinder, but the use of a central heating radiator for the griddle is an extremely good idea. A vortex air inlet at the bottom and a secondary air injector further up the chimney complete the unit, making for a worthy replacement for a traditional barbecue.

It’s worth saying, this isn’t the first rocket stove we’ve seen, there was this simple design as well as this very well engineered space heater.

32 thoughts on “This Rocket Cookstove Is Hot Stuff!

  1. “…humans began to cook their food with fire for quite a while.”

    This sentence makes no sense. “…humans have been cooking their food with fire for quite a while.” would work. “…humans began to cook their food with fire quite a while ago.” But combining the two is just nonsensical.

    1. The right word would be “ambiguous”, yeah I’d bet early man or woman burnt their dinner, being distracted by a wolf attack. Nice picture of cooked food, I’m making a run to BK.

        1. If food is left unattended and fire goes out, your lunch is up for grabs by the first critter that is hungry enough to get brave be it a skunk, bear, dog, raccoon, etc. LOL I doubt you would have the chance to see if it is burned.

          1. I stopped using the propane tanks while on the road when I had a leaky tank incident. I thought I got roofed in the UP and then heard the intermittent hiss of the tank when I stopped to crash out before I fell asleep thankfully. Decided to go with rocket stove or inverter battery hotplate from that point on unless I make a brass o-ring sealed cap for the tanks. I was surprised those weren’t on the market at the time. Seems like a decent market I’d guess and simple screw machine or lathe made device.

            I like the rocket stove design though haven’t been on the road lately as much to finish the latest more portable and less messy fat boy ammo can one I started working on. Recently ordered a claimed 10,000 watt peak inverter for ~$60 to see what that is about.

          2. It’s against federal law to transport a refilled tank. Yup, sometimes the valve freezes up and doesn’t shut completely. I’ve refilled many dozens of times. There’s an adapter for the 20lb tank, reverse threads, flip upside down, open, refill. My operation in local

          1. The saturated sodium acetate exothermic reaction is a neat reaction.

            I’ve wondered about higher temp methods with other saturated salts that are re-usable (say for at night storing heat to be released using both phases), storing energy in those phases to release during phase change as well as the molten salt systems that are really high temperature regarding if there are curves where there is a significant amount of energy in other salts not well documented. Lithium Chloride comes to mind… though I forget thinking now if that was more a single phase heat capacity optimal property or not. Seems to be… though not really high temp. Probably one of those moments in P.Chem where I’m not looking well read into the situation.

        1. “cooking with thermo chemical”

          Some Vietnam Vets have told me they would heat up their C-Rations by burning C-4.
          (C-4 (gelatine) will explode or burn, to explode, it needs impact, such as a blasting cap, otherwise a match can be used to start it burning– then there was the guy who tried to extinguish some burning C-4 by stomping on it!)

      1. Maybe they’re distinguishing from non-thermal ‘cooking’ methods, such as those done with ceviche. It’s not ‘cooked’ in a normal sense, but it’s also not raw (or so I’m told.)

    1. What is the alarm about…the use of mild steel tubing that was re-purposed from a gas cylinder?
      …because I gotta tell ya…it probably started out as mild steel tubing.

          1. Funnily enough I looked again at the picture. It’s all meat free.
            So is this a way of cooking meat free things with fire bcasue doing them on a normal bbq sucks?

            And why on earth does everythine meat free always have to look like meat?
            Get your own form factor vegans, stop appropriating ours.

            Did you just assume my meat free content?

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