Pot boiler

As a chef stone is called a stone, which is used for food preparation, by exploiting its capacity to store heat energy for heating the food. Cooking stones can be used to make different demands on rock type, shape and size for many different ways of cooking.

Right from the Stone Age settlements are stones that were used to kitchen purposes, obtained in large numbers and can provide information on the habits of the former cultures during excavations. On the basis of rock and scuffs can be most clearly seen what these stones were actually used.

With the advent of ceramics and metals frying and cooking was possible without stones.

• 3.1 effectiveness
• 3.2 Rock

Forms of cooking stones

Actual cooking stones are those which are placed in a highly durchgehitzten state in aqueous liquids such as soup, stew or syrup to bring it to a boil. The method is the oldest form of cooking with water and bring the only viable option, liquid food without container or electricity to cook until today. It is still used in this form. In addition to this real KochForm there are also other forms of preparation with stones.

When bricks are called stones that are used for waterless cooking food that surrounds it or be covered. Even this use is still in use today. The term is in the German language is homonymous with the term brick, which is produced by burning ( baking) of glazed clay, but was not used for the preparation of food and has nothing to do with.

As Bratstein is called a stone base that is used in a heated condition for the frying of food. Baking and Bratsteine ​​be used in traditional cuisines of different cultures and also in Europe in dining as an experience ( Hot Stone ) offered. However, you will compared to cooking stones, to which there was no alternative before the invention of pots, a smaller historical importance.

Prehistoric Garungsmethoden

Grilling

The people stood in prehistoric times only the open fire available, allowing only preparation forms, which are now known as grilling. These forms are not very complicated, but are only suitable for meat which is also cooked only superficially, in depth but often remain untreated until the overlying strata are exposed. An ongoing Nachgrillen was necessary. Plant food can be bad or not be digested with open fire. The search for more effective methods of preparation brought as one of the numerous intermediate stages today to conventional methods produce baking, frying and cooking with stones, that has been preserved as an alternative cooking method to antiquity, through the Middle Ages to modern times.

Grill Cooking

As an early precursor of the water cooking methods the grill cooking of whole animals in their own body shell is considered. Where pigs, monkeys, rodents, etc. down in flames, charred skin and dermis to a stable crust, under the start to cook in its own juice the muscle tissue and internal organs. Also in this way are kochbar turtles and shellfish. Here, the entire body heated up inside and can then be broken up and eaten. In this method, the food is completely digested and disinfected, but is a part of the animal by charring lost. The smaller the animal, the faster cooking of the body content. Today are based some variants preparation of guinea pig in South America on this method for the pure diet kitchen. The specialty cuisine of many traditions additionally has a few recipes with this formulation.

A further development of the method figured the (small ) animal to give (eg a hedgehog ) covered with grass to the fire or to pack it in clay and longer time to leave the clay ball (depending on size, for example, two hours) in the fire and then aufzuklopfen.

Development and use of cooking stones

As the barbecue is also possible to bake without intermediate storage of thermal energy through direct contact with heated air. Bricks can be used in addition or alternatively, according to tradition. Frying and cooking, however, were originally exclusively available only with stones, because no other fire-resistant materials were available, from which vessels or documents were finished.

With the first water boiling process, the used cooking stones, also succeeded in effectively unlock herbal spices and food ingredients and to develop a real kitchen. Soups and sauces -like preparations and cooked vegetable extracts such as teas were only possible with cooking stones originally. Of all the methods of preparation, cooking is the most versatile and universally applicable for each food type. Unlike the other methods, cooking enabled with stones for the first time a safe and complete kill of pathogens and parasites into deep layers.

Cooking in the modern sense, that is possible with any form of food that requires hot water for a sufficiently long period in which the ingredients can swim. In Stone Age societies water and feed ingredients were placed in soil or stone troughs and cooked with heat cooking stones worldwide. This was the only way of cooking water, let cook ( legumes) Cooking with the heavily -digest foods, such as bones, cellulose-containing fruits, roots, and dry foods. For plants, the dry milling was alternatively still available to flour, which could be used for the production of baked goods.

The use of cooking stones occurred in almost all cultures and runs partially into technologised stages of development. However, because only a few rocks for cooking are suitable and can be used longer, were cooking stones in regions that have no natural occurrence of suitable rocks, as a family owned and tools. They were inherited and traded.

Only recently, after the invention of the immersion heater, it was possible to heat water without storage medium in wells, but this technique is not used in industrialized countries for cooking food. Electric heaters are used in conjunction with vessels. With the invention of pots and kettles the water-based cooking with stones came a whole in the background and only in special gastronomic preparations in use. This has in addition to practical and taste reasons. In some areas, cooking stones are still used as a traditional method of preparation, which is occasionally practiced. The modification of the method occurs. So cooking stones are industrially sintered from granules into hollow bodies in China today, filled with coal and sold as disposable products for use with special countertop ovens in orders of magnitude, which can sometimes cause problems in waste incineration.

Development and use of bricks

The waterless baking of meat and vegetables in its present form requires a furnace in the high air temperatures can be maintained over a longer period. The construction of directly heated furnaces is complex and requires experience and local residency. And disseminated Older world were the simpler earth oven, which can be anywhere to create, partly are still in use today and are also used in industrialized countries for special meals. The initial development of the furnace goes back to natural or created cavities in rock walls or floors where the fire was sparked. Only some designs work with bricks, most furnace types can be used without intermediate storage.

When baking with bricks the food is wrapped with highly heated pieces, either as a heap on the ground floor, which is designed to be a once only usable oven, or in embeddings into wells. The rock types used differ considerably from those of cooking stones and make fewer demands. There are almost all rocks used for baking, which is why the regionally available rocks could be used. They were therefore not carried on hikes and in many cases used only once. Chipping and abrasion is not problematic in this formulation.

In ground fire -free baking is possible if many hot bricks are formed into a bed, on which laid the dishes and covered with earth area, parts of plants or other bricks. Replacing chilled stones during the baking process is not or hardly possible here. Depending on the construction bricks can also be heated by a directly above the well -scale wood fire, which is removed after the burning.

To date, this method is an alternative to more modern forms of preparation eg in the Caribbean and South America use, where it is traditionally used to festivities. Originally living Aborigines in Australia today use different forms of earth ovens in which bricks are also used for heat storage, depending on the design principle.

Roast on stone

Roast also goes back to the Stone Age methods in which meals were prepared on hot stones, which were often concave. Again, the meat gets no direct contact with fire and can in fat or in a sauce are ( Sotten and stewing ). Bratsteine ​​are often larger than the other and have a flat shape. This process requires a long burning fire, is energetically unfavorable and, later evolving to the stove and to the skillet.

More preparation variants

Stones can generally be used in many ways as a heat supplier. As a modified hybrid between cooking, baking and roasting, the use of braided cooking baskets can be viewed, in the food and (smaller) cooking stones were laid. With shaking or stirring the food to be cooked through, heated or kept warm. Also filling out animals with many smaller cooking stones have carried cook from the inside.

Cooking stones were also retains heat for prepared foods use or can be cooled Preheat food or keep it warm again. They were inserted in this braided chrome baskets, but also in animal containers such as stomachs, bladders, etc..

Operating principle cooking stone

The stone is strongly heated over an open flame on fire or otherwise, and placed in this state in water. He releases the stored heat to the water and bring it to a boil. Cooking stones must be large enough or be used in sufficient numbers. If the water for a long time to cook, the stones must be replaced. The discovered during excavations cooking stones are between Faust and head size.

Many small stones can be heated faster, but also release their energy more quickly into the water. Large stones must be preheated use a lot of hours, but can hold a soup long cooking.

Will cook stones heated over an open fire or embers, they take on their surface to substances that go into the soup and contribute to the flavor. This effect is independent of the type of stone and is affected by the fire and fuels. In addition, all stones take by thermal wear and abrasion also a taste influence, which is related to the rock type and can not be avoided.

Effectiveness

Cooking stones can save a significant amount of heat energy and hand these over a much longer period than comparable masses of metal. However, they need a long time to be heated and accept those temperatures prevailing at the location where they are located. Commonly used is the situation in embers, directly in the flames or above the flames on plates or rods. In the upper region of the flame is the heating effect is greatest. The temperatures adopted by the stones are different depending on the method, the stones but not to glow.

Are there enough cooking stones are available, they are big or they can be constantly replaced and reheated, it is for example possible to cook standing waters on the edge. A ring of hot stones, which are changed in turn, can keep the water any length of cooking. However Completed small Erdmulden are more effective. The Yanomami Indians in the Amazon dig a hole near the shore, which is lined with banana leaves and equipped for cooking with hot cooking stones.

Rock

Basically, all stones are suitable for heat storage and for boiling water, but the vast majority of rock types are not suitable because they decompose either or release substances to the food that distort the taste or make them unpalatable from chemical and material- technical reasons for the preparation of food. This includes all sedimentary rocks such as Keuper, lime or sand stones, which can cook any food. The abrasion of limestone may also be desirable in some food or drink, such as the stone beer, a rare specialty with a typically distinctive, tart flavor that goes back in part to dissolved limestone.

Also suitable for cooking are stones that split when heating or quenching in colder water and disintegrate. In addition, stones are unsuitable, do not last long enough. In cultures that were not resident, cooking stones had to be carried on walking and could not be replaced if lost. Good cooking stones featured in many cultures represents a significant value

To cook mainly metamorphic rocks, granite and pebbles of many variants are. Also basalt is very suitable and largely tasteless. Most of the cultures rock types were preferred that keep the flavor impact low.

In stone -poor regions, such as estuaries, also fired or air-dried balls of clay or loess were used for the same purpose. These cooking meatballs are typical artifacts from the Archaic period in the lower reaches of the Mississippi River and the adjacent parts of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Particularly pronounced forms are the type characteristic of the Poverty Point culture at the end of the Archaic period in the north of Louisiana, where they are known as Poverty Point Objects.