I love to slow cook in the winter on my old coal stove. It's an 1880 Prizer Royale and is a real working antique. We just lit the stove for the season this weekend, and haven't cooked on it yet. Once we light it, we keep it going until about Mid to late April, and then clean up the stove so we can keep using it. It's an amazing stove, and is still a work of art after 125 years. It took us a while to learn how to burn the stove right. It has a nice sized oven too.
While the thermometer on the oven goes to 500 F, we don't feel comfortable getting the oven hotter than 350 F. We don't want to hurt the stove, and at 350, believe me, the stove is hot. I can't imagine how hot it would be if the oven were to get to 500.
Our coal stove is great for soups, stews, chowders, anything you'd cook in a slow cooker. I'd guess we make the typical beef soup with beef, carrots, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes more often then other recipes. But being here in the mid-Atlantic, we also like to make Maryland Crab Soup in the winter. We also like New England Clam chowder, and may make it once a season (we only make it once a year mostly because of all of the fat in the heavy whipping cream needed for a good chowder).
When the California Artichokes from the Imperial Valley come to the stores in Feb, we make Lemon-Artichoke Soup. Yum!
