Certain home heating appliances can often allow you to cook on the top surface of the unit thanks to the whole appliance getting extremely hot from the fire inside.
An example of a common solid fuel burning appliance often used to cook on or boil water is wood burning stoves, but pellet stoves also can also burn wood as the fuel and so can you cook on a pellet stove?
Cooking on a pellet stove typically isn’t possible. Pellet stoves work differently to wood stoves and don’t absorb the heat through the body before releasing it out to the room. As a result, pellet stoves don’t usually get hot enough to be able to cook on.
Our own pellet stove doesn’t get hot enough on the top for us to be able to cook on.
We’ve explained in more detail why this is the case and why you typically won’t find a pellet stove that you can cook on, and what the better options are for home heating appliances to cook on.
Can You Cook On A Pellet Stove?
You’re unlikely to find a pellet stove that you can cook on.
On the other hand, many wood burning stoves provide the ability to cook, and you can even find some models of wood stove that have an area at the top of the appliance dedicated for cooking on.
The reason why wood burning stoves are most suited for cooking on compared to pellet stoves is due to the way they work, in particular how they transfer the heat from the fire to the room.
Whereas wood burning stoves absorb the heat from the fire inside and radiate that heat out into the room through the body of the appliance, pellet stoves opt for conveying the heat through convection of hot air using a distribution blower.
See our guides on how wood burning stoves work and how pellet stoves work for more information.
As well as air-heating versions, pellet stoves can also come in hydro form meaning that they can be used for central heating purposes rather than space heating purposes.
Whatever the type of pellet stove, the body of a pellet stove typically doesn’t get hot enough in order to be able to cook on, even if the top of a pellet stove makes a great platform on which to cook.
For example, our pellet stove is flat at the top.
Although this surface does get hot to the touch it doesn’t get anywhere near hot enough to be able to cook on.
The manufacturer of our pellet stove explains that only two main areas of the stove really get hot:
‘During operation of the pellet stove the flue pipes and fire door are hot.’
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As the fire in a pellet stove is contained within the combustion chamber, much of the heat is concentrated around this area, which in the case of our pellet stove is located at the font middle area.
Waste air from a pellet stove fire is directed out of the stove through the flue via the flue socket and so this is another area of a pellet stove that gets very hot.
As the heat from the fire is distributed to the air being blown out of the front of the stove, the remaining areas around the body of a pellet stove don’t get as hot, otherwise the stoves wouldn’t be as efficient.
This includes the top area of a pellet stove, making them unsuitable for cooking on.
The top surface of our pellet stove does still get hot and so the manufacturer of our stove recommends:
‘Flammable objects should not be placed on the top board of the pellet stove’.
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If you’re looking to be able to cook on a home heating appliance then a wood burning stove is a much better option that a pellet stove.
Can You Boil Water On A Pellet Stove?
The body of a pellet stove typically doesn’t get hot enough to be able to boil water.
Further Reading
Can You Burn Wood In A Pellet Stove?
Can You Burn Corn In A Pellet Stove?
How Long Pellet Stoves Burn For