EcoZoom Plancha Cook Stove

Tom Pritchard from EcoZoom located in Oregon contacted me a while back about their wood cooking stove called the EcoZoom Plancha. He thought the owners of tiny houses might be interested in the stove and asked me to review it.

The stove arrived via FedEX and I was anxious to check it out and give it a try. Weighing in around 80 pounds they recommend two people move it but one can do it if necessary as I soon discovered. You need to raise it to a working level and I located an old metal base to use as I was going to test it outside.

The stove can be used indoors but it must be vented outside with the included stove pipe. Assembly is very easy, I removed it from the box and took the stove pipe from the back wood drying area. I attached the stove pipe with the included materials in a couple of minutes. Great instructions are also included to help you understand your stove.

Once set up I prepared my materials. I had some small kindling, a newspaper and a couple of matches. By opening the door and placing the wood holder below the opening it was easy to start the fire, my wood started immediately and within a couple of minutes you could feel the heat coming through the top. I chose to just use one burner for my test.

I decided to fry an egg on the burner for my review test. It did not take long for the heat to build up and so I added a little butter and then cracked the egg and started to fry it. It did it fairly quickly yet I did not feel I was going to burn it as the heat was very even. It took about 8 minutes from the time I started the fire and when the egg was fried. Not bad in my opinion.

As you can see in the photo above I am not the best cook and I managed to spill a little egg on the cooktop. I think this would make a great small family cook stove with the two burners at your service.

I believe that the EcoZoom Plancha would work real well for someone with a tiny house. Especially for an outdoor kitchen and it may have possibilities for indoors too with precautions. Having the sticks burning sitting outside of the door inside a home would be a little nerve racking for some, but if it is well attended I think that it could work. You will have to be the judge. I used it outdoors and it worked really well.

You can also use charcoal to cook with the stove which would help reduce some of the fears of burning wood indoors since the charcoal is cooked with the top door closed and bottom door is used only for airflow, resulting in less risk of fire. I did not have charcoal available so have not tried that yet.

EcoZoom is offering the Plancha Cook Stove to Tiny House Blog readers at a discount of $50 off the list price. Use this at checkout time, and it is limited to one use per customer, the code is tinyhouse Click Here

They also produce several rocket stoves that may be of interest to you so check them out too.

Here is a little more information about the company.

EcoZoom is a for-profit, certified B Corp making clean cookstoves accessible and affordable in developing countries. Since starting in April of 2011, we’ve sold over 70,000 cookstoves into our 14 target countries.

Three billion people in the world rely on biomass and charcoal for their cooking needs, often burning it indoors on open fires or dangerous unimproved cookstoves. We believe that people of any economic status should have access to beautifully designed cooking products that will improve their health, income, and environment.

EcoZoom designs, manufactures, and sells stoves to multinational for?profit and nonprofit organizations, NGOs, and governments who distribute to end consumers in commercial, development or relief projects. EcoZoom is focused in four key regions: Eastern, Western and Southern sub-Saharan Africa, and specific countries within Latin America.

EcoZoom cookstoves are healthy, efficient and environmentally friendly.

They:

• reduce fuel need by 60%,
• emit 70% less smoke and emissions than a three stone fire,
• and stay cooler to the touch while in use to prevent burns.