Posted: 4/1/2025 9:02:27 PM EDT
[Last Edit: TheOtherDave][Edited]
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Picked up a rather interesting gadget this week-the Instafire Ember. This is a small oven (the size of a toaster oven) that can run on canned heat chafing fuel containers, sticks and twigs, or charcoal. Youtube reviews looked good, price was right in a world where a couple of sheets of titanium or stainless steel folded into a twig stove cost $80…. Hell, a plastic Easy Bake toy oven with a lightbulb inside and a couple of bags of cheap cake mix costs $160 on Amazon these days, I saw this oven a few days ago for the same price and figured I would take a stab at it. Took 2 days to get here, typical amazon shipping. The oven is crazy well packed-double boxed, encased in fitted foam and then packed in an Amazon box. Build quality of the stove is far, far, far better than you’d expect for the money these days-no rattles, even paint application, nothing to gripe about at all. It seems like a properly engineered product. It comes with a snuffer/wick guide and insulated plate that has to be used with the chafing canisters, a cap for the front chafing container to help regulate temperature once up to temp, and a poker for the fire chamber. The bottom of the fire chamber dumps out into the ash pan when it’s time to shut it down when burning wood/charcoal I ordered a non-stick pan set at the same time and sterno liquid chafing fuel, and when it came tonight I decided I would play around with and make chocolate chip cookies indoors with it. I had watched enough videos to know what to expect, but here are points of note: 1) It took exactly the same 30 minutes to pre-heat with sterno as the YT vids showed to get to 350F. Those same reviews show it heats up in about half the time with wood. 2)The first run will smoke a fair bit for the first hour while the paint bakes off. Wife complained, we opened windows, nobody died. 3) The YT video mentioned a lot that it requires a fair bit of fiddling to maintain a steady temperature-my experience was that it wasn’t until the 3rd batch of cookies when the steady temp of 350 rose to 400 degrees after the 30 minute warm up, then two batches of cookies at 15 min or so each. I had already capped the front chafing dish to extinguish it, but it leaked vapor and reignited a little. Even closing the vents completely there was enough air leakage to stay at 400 degrees. I couldn’t do anything about it so I just pulled the cookies a little early and they were fine. 4) The chafing dishes burn thru fuel a LOT faster in this oven than what they were designed for. I burned what feels like 2/3 of the fuel of the rear can and about half of the front in an hour and 25 minutes…. These are 6 hour cans….. I’ll be saving the liquid fuels and burning charcoal in this most likely, I have a ton of it put away and I won’t smell like a campfire every time I use this thing. 5) Reading the instructions, they state that this is nominally a 350 degree oven. I’m going to reach out to the manufacturer and find out if it only applies to the liquid fuels can for safety reasons (they talk about fuel vapor flare ups in the instructions) or if it also applies to solid fuels. I’m not sure I can control this oven if I’m limited to 350 degrees, the rear vent leaked too much air to throttle it down once it got past the 1 hour mark-I ran it wide open up to that point. 4) Afterr the cookies were done, putting the cans out with the snuffer tool made an incredible amount of smoke-didn’t smell though. I took the ash pan with the cans, covers etc. out of the house to do their thing. 5) It never felt unsafe, but you’ll probably want something underneath this on any surface you care about-it is an Oven for sure and gets really, really hot. Takes quite a while to cool down, there’s a fair bit of metal, it weighs 17lbs. Can’t offer much more than this for now, I’ll be doing more cooking with it using other fuels to see what it’s like to live with and posting about what I learn kind of like my solar oven thread. My main concern right now is whether or not I can control the heat with charcoal and wood as that’s how I’ll use it most. But for now it does what it was supposed to do and wasn’t hard to use or figure out. Attached File Attached File Attached File Attached File Attached File Attached File |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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This is the dump grate for the solid fuels: Attached File |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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Instafire LINK Interesting. Hope the innards that get really hot are stainless steel. Looks like a small rack with legs about 1/2 height of oven might come in handy. Wonder how much smoke the thing makes when using sticks and so forth? Likely most smoke at start-up and after extinguishing. Might be possible to paint rusting items, after de-rusting, with suitable High-Temp "Exhaust Header" paint--not cheap. Time will tell if necessary. Kinda related: I have a Coleman Portable Camping Oven which can be used on Coleman stoves and perhaps grilles above wood/coals/sterno and so forth. If using the item in very cold temps, consider adding some"Weldor's/Plumber's" carbon cloth to insulate the body of the device, and aid in heat retention. Possibly secure the cloth with magnets. Also useful in reducing possible burns if hot body of the device is accidentally touched. Version seen HERE is for Coleman-type Oven, but you get the idea. Looks like a potentially useful item. Thanks for suggestion! |
| I didn’t get a reply to my email about temperature maximum, so I called and talked to a nice lady at Instafire. As I suspected, the max temperature of 350deg. F is only for the liquid fuel for safety as they flare up as the cans get hot and atomize the fuel. For running wood, 550 is the max, which will cook anything I can think of… |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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Originally Posted By raf: Instafire LINK Interesting. Hope the innards that get really hot are stainless steel. Looks like a small rack with legs about 1/2 height of oven might come in handy. Wonder how much smoke the thing makes when using sticks and so forth? Likely most smoke at start-up and after extinguishing. Might be possible to paint rusting items, after de-rusting, with suitable High-Temp "Exhaust Header" paint--not cheap. Time will tell if necessary. Kinda related: I have a Coleman Portable Camping Oven which can be used on Coleman stoves and perhaps grilles above wood/coals/sterno and so forth. If using the item in very cold temps, consider adding some"Weldor's/Plumber's" carbon cloth to insulate the body of the device, and aid in heat retention. Possibly secure the cloth with magnets. Also useful in reducing possible burns if hot body of the device is accidentally touched. Version seen HERE is for Coleman-type Oven, but you get the idea. Looks like a potentially useful item. Thanks for suggestion! Thanks for posting the link, I must’a forgot.  The insides of the stove are indeed Stainless steel-I was wondering about putting a rack in the middle of the inside so you could bake more than one pan of cookies.. seems like it wouldn’t be hard to do at work. As for the smoke, I saw a lot of it coming out on the YT videos at startup, but you don’t know what they were using to get the stove going I’d imagine it’s no different than a box stove like the Emberlit or the Chinese copies that are common today-I have an original Emberlit and like it a lot. I have one of the Coleman folding ovens like you linked and it seems to work well, but my wood stove in the cabin will only get hot enough to bake something at full tilt and that will run you out of there winter or summer unless you just got there in the cold months and need to warm the cabin up. It worked ok with my Whisperlight International stove, but took a bit of fiddling to keep the temperature up. I see this Instafire Ember as another way of preparing food in the hot months when I don’t want to make the cabin any warmer than it already is-which was a prime reason for doing all of the solar tube cooker buying and testing in my previous thread. 100% though, this Ember oven will cook the shit out of some food, day or night-I just wish they would have made a larger version that’s full size-this one is convenient for two people’s worth of food or if you don’t mind spending the time to manage multiple trays of food like I did on the maiden run. |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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Neat. Im not sure if I would use it, awesome idea though. I did add the collapsible Coleman oven to my wish list though. Honestly I don't use my own oven very often to cook though so I'm not sure. 99% of the time I'm a stovetop cook. camping cookies and cinnamon rolls do sound pretty good. |
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Second run, this time a batch of brownies with charcoal. I filled up the hopper with 6 or 7 briquettes, then put one in the ash pan that I soaked with lighter fluid and lit it. That got the charcoal to a weak ash state, so I grabbed some twigs off of the ground and tossed them in and got them going. That made it take right and got the temperature climbing. I put the brownies in at 300f, the package called for 325 but I figured it would be difficult to control once the coals got burning in earnest and I was right. The oven rose to 350 and I had a hard time controlling it by damping the air, seemed like nothing I did moved the needle…. So I figured I would just check them early at 18 minutes. We got a perfect batch of brownies out it it. What was interesting is that when the brownies were done, I opened the vents to burn the rest of the coals off. It immediately dropped to 325f and 50 minutes later it’s at 300. Apparently you want more air to cool it down than less, and it’s an incredibly efficient oven-I haven’t added any charcoal to it since I put the initial 6-7 briquettes in it. Happy to note that once the sticks and lighter fluid burned off, it didn’t make any smoke. Other than trying to manage the temperature, it was just like using an appliance. Next time will definitely be better! Attached File Attached File Attached File |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
| When you're done testing, suggest you jot down some notes revealing the "quirks" of this device and telling the next person what you have found out about running it. You may/may not store it for a while and forget what you have learned. If you are not present, the next person to use it will appreciate your notes. |
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Started out cooking a beef tenderloin with charcoal, I needed 400F and was having a hard time getting it with charcoal alone. I stufffed the ash pan with downed branches and that did the trick-I got it up to 380 for half of the 30 minute cook time and 400 for the rest. I was supposed to pull at 145deg internal but when I checked it at 28 minutes it was already 160. Still bloody in the middle though so I wasn’t a total asshole to my wife. Did another batch of brownies after, took a while to get it back up to temp from 300 to 350 but cooked on sticks alone this time. Brownies were done on time. Attached File Attached File |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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Originally Posted By Borscht: Neat. Im not sure if I would use it, awesome idea though. I did add the collapsible Coleman oven to my wish list though. Honestly I don't use my own oven very often to cook though so I'm not sure. 99% of the time I'm a stovetop cook. camping cookies and cinnamon rolls do sound pretty good. I just picked this up for the Coleman oven-it might make a big difference in due consumption and ease of maintaining a temperature… It’s basically a carbon felt cover that goes over/around the Coleman oven. Make sure when you buy one that it covers the front like this one-most I looked at didn’t: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJQZZ8BF?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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Carbon cloth/felt material available at Weldor's/Plumber's supply places, and at Lowe's and Home Depot. Also great for potholders, and for its intended purpose of catching solder drops before the drops land on you or something that the drops could damage. Can also make a decent windscreen for some stoves, although it's very light, so you'll need to stake/secure it. I have seen folks wrap this around the circumference of a cooking pot, and use a disk on top of the lid, with cut-out for lid handle. Safety pins and stainless-steel Ace bandage "clasps" seem to work for securing it to itself. Mostly ultra-lite folks who want to carry/use as little fuel as possible. As with all insulation, suggest using "base" device (Pot/Coleman Oven) by itself to get a useful baseline experience, then experimenting with the add-on "blanket". The less the wind, the better it works. |
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I just got one myself. Attached File I got the pan set, seemed really well made. Attached File Well, it SEEMED like it. That's the smaller pan. Attached File Honestly, this thing seems really well built, quite impressed with the quality of the build. Plenty of tools to help, also well built. Attached File Instacan fire snuffer. Attached File |
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Fire snuffer in place. Attached File I bought the case of the 6 hour fire cans too. Seemed like the thing to do at the time...THEN i found out CAL Ranch has 4 hour fire candles, too. I wonder how well they work for this job. Attached File I darn near threw this out with the box, carrying case and fire starters. Almost forgot they came with the special deal from MyPatriotSupply. Attached File |
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So, I figured, since I'm using an emergency item from My Patriot Supply, I should cook something I got from the same source. The first box I grabbed that made sense was the cornbread. Attached File The whole bag must be mixed per instructions. Attached File It fills 12 muffin spots, so I did half in the traditional oven and half in the Ember. Attached File It was VERY hard to get the temp up to and stay at 350. Attached File |
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I gave the Ember muffins an extra two minutes and they seemed just fine. Tasted great. Attached File Compared to the traditional ones, the traditional oven baked are a little taller and of course took much less time - Ember in front. Attached File Now the bad - it took capping off the heat cans to stop the smoking, would not stop. The oven takes a long time to cool down, but that's to be expected. It works. I'm good with it. Edit to add, my wife and I had cornbread muffins with pan cooked Costco Mild Italian sausage. Why...well, it seems like the thing to do at the time. Long story short, the wife tried one of each, and said the Ember ones were a little spongier...which I am good with. Leaving the candles to cool for about 2 hours, at which time I will find a place to store this thing...nifty! |
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The chafing fuels are the slowest to get to temp and 350 is about all you get out of them-watch that second chafing can, they really do flare up when the oven gets to temperature and it burns a shitload of fuel as the fuel inside is literally boiling off. The nice things about the chafing fuels are (obviously) that you can use the oven indoors (I’d put it on a cookie sheet if you plan to walk away just in case-I’ve had a house fire and it ain’t no fun. The chafing fuels are consistent in terms of how hot they get and there isn’t much you can’t do in an oven at 350F, but the truth is that charcoal and sticks are much faster. Sticks are fastest, Charcoal is the best to regulate. I like starting charcoal with sticks. It gets the oven up to temperature quick and burns even-much better run time than sticks too. |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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Originally Posted By armoredman: I gave the Ember muffins an extra two minutes and they seemed just fine. Tasted great. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/360589/Ember_25_jpg-3694783.JPG Compared to the traditional ones, the traditional oven baked are a little taller and of course took much less time - Ember in front. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/360589/Ember_26_jpg-3694784.JPG Now the bad - it took capping off the heat cans to stop the smoking, would not stop. The oven takes a long time to cool down, but that's to be expected. It works. I'm good with it. Oh yeah….. the smoke….. I used chafing fuel off of amazon, same thing-it smoked the kitchen out until my dumb ass capped it. Be mindful that if you go a while before using the cans again they will probably rust shut-the burned fuel is pretty hard on the cans and they rust relatively quickly. I cant remember if I posted this, but I had an issue with smoke getting into the oven chamber and called Emberlit about it. That happens when you damper the oven down too much. Made a bad batch of cookies that way, might be a bonus if you are using wood and doing a loin or roast…. Hmmm… wonder how practical a tiny smoke tube would be in it.. The most frustrating thing about this oven is babysitting it to keep the temperature you want, then cooking your food, and watching it maintain that temperature for an hour after you don’t need it anymore… It’s definitely a learning curve to get to where you can set it and forget it….. I just wish they would make a larger full sized oven, maybe with a temperature controlled fan…. |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
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Originally Posted By bulldog1967: I’d rather have an ecozoom stove, even though it is twice the price. Max temp 1,000 degrees. https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41jS8hd3TEL._AC_.jpg That’s a stove, not an oven. |
Never make another person a priority when they merely see you as an option...
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
"Some People Are Like Slinkies. They're Not Really Good For Anything, But They Bring a Smile To Your Face When Pushed Down The Stairs."
| The BioLite EcoZoom Versa rocket stove is not twice the price - I found it online for $159. It would be an interesting addition to the Ember to allow different things to be cooked in different ways. Not the same item by far, but complimentary, bake muffins in the Ember while cooking the bacon and eggs on the EcoZoom. |