Tuesday 18 October 2016

Fried Bread In A Frying Pan And Whole Mushrooms Cooked On Top Of The Range.




I have featured our Stanley (Mourne) range before on other blog posts.  It's solid fuel (coal, logs, turf -peat..) and it runs seven radiators, gives us hot water and we cook on top of it and in the oven.  It uses electricity to pump the hot water to the radiators.  A plumber told us to get a pump fitted because it's the same principle of a steam engine and potentially the heat and steam pressure could blow the gable off our little rural dwelling - "Yikes Scooby!"

This morning we cooked our breakfast with it.  We placed bread in the frying pan to make fried bread and placed whole mushrooms on top of the range.  My wife remembers her mother cooking them this way when they visited her grandparents in Galway.  It prevents them from going soggy, keeps the juices and the flavour and it was a very cheap and enjoyable meal.  

Any body else cook on top of the range?  In Poland they cook sausages on top of the radiators.  I wonder what other ways there are to cook?  Anybody ever made or seen an hay box cooker?  

16 comments:

  1. A very useful range. We have a wood burner which has a stove as well. Heats the main room and kitchen and the oven churns out real feasts while the top has a pan of something heating up or simmering. Makes for fattening winters. Yours is a real super-duper-device.

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  2. Thanks L A. My grandma use to have a yellow coloured range in the farmhouse. I think they called it: "Country Cream" colour. The only down side to the range is when the cold water pripe freezes outside or when we get an Atlantic gale and the power goes off. However we can light it if we don't build up the fire and we can cook on top of the other stove we have in the front room. My wife loves her Stanley range and is always baking and cooking with it. Thanks for your comment!

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  3. Don't have a solid fuel cooker, but do have an old army field kitchen in the workshop (man cave) which I try to make use of whenever it is lit, which is quite often in the winter. We also cook toast on the open fire that is in our sitting room.
    I LOVE fried bread. When I was a little girl we had it for breakfast throughout the summer (it was always pobs - hot milk, bread and sugar in the winter) We used to walk to school eating our fried bread, which for a treat sometimes had brown sauce spread on it.
    Gill

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  4. We used to toast bread on the toasting fork in front of the fire when we were younger. I have seem my aunt brown meat straight on the hot plate of the rayburn before.

    Plenty of cooking out doors on a fire and in a dutch oven, throwning the coals on the top. We even have the tripod to hold the pot.

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    1. Hi Sol, My dad use to tell me that his mother would cut a raw slice off a newly killed pig and the bacon was delicious.

      The dutch oven sounds great. Must get hold of a toasting fork. Could do with some tea cake and crumpet recipes. My wife's scones are amazing with cream and strawberry jam. Thanks!

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  5. Hi FID. You sound like your ready for every ememrgency. Can remember the power cuts in the seventies and my dad cooking bacon and baked beans on a paraffin stove. It was all brass and the food was delicious.

    The fried bread from your childhood sounds wonderful nostalgia, I remember living near a pie shop and the baker use to make meat and potato pies for the mill-workers. His stove was coal fired and the pies were to die for. Thanks!

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  6. I love fried bread, but rarely make it because I tend to make the bread too fatty! Not got our Rayburn lit yet, but that does our radiators. We were going to have hot water running off it, but it was too complicated a job to do, so we put that idea to one side until we can afford to have it done. Looking forward to having the Rayburn running again, but still not cold enough here.

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    1. We have our range lit most days of the year Vera. We use it to cook and for hot water most of the year. We need the radiators from September on wards. We have a lever that turns the radiators off if it's too hot. We seldom use it. So the radiators give constant heat unlike oil or gas which is thermostatically controlled. Thanks!

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  7. I use the range to cook dinner but as we never light it until the evening I cant cook breakfast on it.

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    1. Try them for tea for a change Anne. We always light our range in the morning most times of the year. Thanks!

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  8. We do toast on the hot plate of our Stanley 6 , a full roast in the oven. The top heat from ours is circulated using a two bladed Ecofan made by Caframo and the rest makes hot water.

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  9. Never thought of toast made on the range hot plate Heron. We have a Stanley Mourne number 7. They are great aren't they? Thanks!

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    1. Thanks BG. We made (cooked) cheese on toast on the hot plate today. Thanks!

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  11. One of our projects for this year is to build a haybox. I've got an old book about hayboxes and suitable recipes. It looks quite a simple construction. Can't wait to give it a go. We love our range, too. Solid fuel, heats water, radiators and is a cooking range, too. I must try the mushroom cooking technique.

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    1. Hi Elaine. Must follow your blog then I can see the hay-box. We made cheese on toast on the hot plate yesterday. It's very nice. Thanks!

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