Looking for a cooking stone

[JRP3]

Hi all. I recently moved into a home with a fireplace insert. Always looking for ways to save energy I've been looking for a cooking stone that I could place in the firebox to heat up and then pull out and cook on. I was thinking of those ceramic pizza stones but they are usually about 1/2 inch thick and I don't know if they would hold the heat long enough. I was thinking of a thicker stone, something like this actually but without the burners:
(broken link removed) or this: http://www.blackrockgrill.co.uk/
Cheaper would be nice too, I'm tempted to go out in the woods and grab a rock but I'd hate to have it explode in the fireplace!
Thoughts?

 

[thephotohound]

JRP -

We have a bunch of the pampered chef stone products (I made a lasagna in one of them last night!). They absolutely hold heat for a long time... they're usually still warm 1-2 hrs later!

 

[JRP3]

Do you heat it up inside your stove then pull it out and cook on it or do you cook while it's still in the stove?

 

[Burn-1]

JRP do a search for soapstone cookware and you will find all kinds a places which sell what you are looking for. I used to have a soapstone pizza stone. It worked well but not as well as putting quarry tiles on the floor of my oven.

 

[budman]

Hi all. I recently moved into a home with a fireplace insert. Always looking for ways to save energy I've been looking for a cooking stone that I could place in the firebox to heat up and then pull out and cook on. I was thinking of those ceramic pizza stones but they are usually about 1/2 inch thick and I don't know if they would hold the heat long enough. I was thinking of a thicker stone, something like this actually but without the burners:
(broken link removed) or this: http://www.blackrockgrill.co.uk/
Cheaper would be nice too, I'm tempted to go out in the woods and grab a rock but I'd hate to have it explode in the fireplace!
Thoughts?

In the stove , :ahhh: come on man get real.

 

[JRP3]

In the stove , :ahhh: come on man get real.

Why? Seems some others understand what I'm asking about and think it's possible. Why do you think otherwise? Just looking for information.

 

[budman]

In the stove , :ahhh: come on man get real.

Why? Seems some others understand what I'm asking about and think it's possible. Why do you think otherwise? Just looking for information.

I would have to say if you had a free standing stove that you could heat on top of it
that would be great, but to put that stone in the fire box??????????

 

[Burn-1]

I would have to say if you had a free standing stove that you could heat on top of it that would be great, but to put that stone in the fire box??????????

JRP, I misread your first post. I thought it read fireplace not 'fireplace insert'. We used to cook in our fireplace all the time so I thought that is what you meant. You can cook a lot of things in the hot ashes of a hearth but a firebox gets really hot. All of the stone cookware that I am aware of cannot go from one extreme to the other and taking a room temperature pot into a firebox with secondary flames going off would break most of them for sure. Soapstone has one of the smallest coefficients of expansion of any refractory material but even that has its limits.

A freestanding stove would be better and a wood cookstove even more so but you would need foundry gloves to do what you are suggesting and if you were to drop it on something flammable you would be in a bad spot quickly. While cooking stones are meant to get hot, no way should you have something that hot. One of the grill rocks which you linked to is basically a stone chafing dish meant to use alcohol gel, (Sterno) after you pre-heat it, not unlike a pu-pu platter. That is reasonably safe.

Or if you were really into this idea make an outside fire pit and use that to heat it up. Finally, I hope that you intend to cook somewhere where there is adequate venting otherwise your house will smell like Chili's or any other place where they drop the food onto the hot cast iron griddle and it sizzles up into a frothy smoky, steamy mess.

 

[JRP3]

I guess I'm venturing into new territory here. I figured people have been pulling rocks out of fires and cooking with them since the beginning of time but didn't consider the elevated temperatures in an insert. I'll have to experiment but I figure I should be able to regulate the temperature by how long I leave it in and by how hot the fire is when I put it in. I can see that soapstone is not rugged enough for what I want. I'll try a cheap pizza stone first and see how it goes. I'm always up for an experiment :cheese:

 

[Dunadan]

figured people have been pulling rocks out of fires and cooking with them since the beginning of time but didn’t consider the elevated temperatures in an insert.

JRP -

I've got some great stones I could sell you (cheap) for cooking. Just tell me what size and shape and I'll get them right out to you.

Just try to let me know before it starts really getting cold and rainy as I don't want to catch a chill while I'm scrounging around the back yard....err....I mean my kitchen cabinet...finding exactly what you're looking for ;-P

 

[JRP3]

I've got some great stones I could sell you (cheap) for cooking. Just tell me what size and shape and I'll get them right out to you.

Just try to let me know before it starts really getting cold and rainy as I don't want to catch a chill while I'm scrounging around the back yard....err....I mean my kitchen cabinet...finding exactly what you're looking for ;-P

If they come with a no water/no explosion guarantee send them right out!

 

[JRP3]

This is looking promising:
(broken link removed)
Volcanic basalt should be able to handle the heat I would think.