Hobo Stove

[Gary Childress]

I never seem to get around to making one but I tried it out today. Unless I'm mistaken you have to place meat on top of the grill manually in order to cook it. Is there an advantage to the hobo stove? I know I could probably put more meat on at one time but then it rots before I have a chance to eat it. Does it cook faster or use less wood? Otherwise it doesn't seem all that useful compared to a campfire with a smoker.

[frillen]

The advantage is if you want to make big batches of smoked meat then you can cook them on a hobo stove, maybe even in one go if you can pile them up on the hobo stove, and then skip the cooking part on the smoker, it will save you time when smoking cooked meat rather than having the smoker to cook them first and then continue the smoking proces :)

[SuperDave]

I found the hobo stove a bit confusing and cumbersome to use myself. Seemed like I could only add one slab of meat at a time from the bottom, and if it was a small piece, I wouldn't be able to pick it up when finished cooking - only the large slabs I could extract.

[thomlovessue]

I'm sorry frillen, but my experience says that it doesn't work that way. I be happy to be proved wrong. But I've cooked meat another way like just over the fire. Then I put the cooked meat and a raw meat of the same size on a smoker. They finished smoking at the same time. It does not make sense, but that is what happened. I only use hobo stoves for humor screenshots, achievements and fake fireplaces in my houses now. I cook with 4 smokers simutaneously cooking 60 small, 40 medium, or 15 large meats (5 sharks worth) in one night. The 40 medium meats will last 40 days or more if you squeeze it. Thus, I only cook less than once per month. Of course, this is with cooking skill 7.

[frillen]

Originally posted by thomlovessue:

I'm sorry frillen, but my experience says that it doesn't work that way. I be happy to be proved wrong. But I've cooked meat another way like just over the fire. Then I put the cooked meat and a raw meat of the same size on a smoker. They finished smoking at the same time. It does not make sense, but that is what happened. I only use hobo stoves for humor screenshots, achievements and fake fireplaces in my houses now. I cook with 4 smokers simutaneously cooking 60 small, 40 medium, or 15 large meats (5 sharks worth) in one night. The 40 medium meats will last 40 days or more if you squeeze it. Thus, I only cook less than once per month. Of course, this is with cooking skill 7.

I just had to go in and test to see if it was true, and yes I can confirm that raw meat and a cooked meat take the same time to smoke, if I remember it correctly it hasn't always been like this, I am pretty sure that cooked meat used to get smoked faster than a raw meat back when they changed smoker mechanics.
Cooked and smoked meat should not take the same amount of time to smoke, this must be a bug :)

Btw back in the older days we used build a campfire under the floor in our hut before the hobo stove was added, then we just dumped the meat on the floor above the fire to mass cook, this trick still works XD

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2403076402

[thomlovessue]

Thanks for the confirmation. I was worried that you might take offense; it wasn't meant that way. So glad that you did not get upset. Yes, the raw meat/ cooked meat smoking in the same time does not make sense. Interesting about the old way of cooking, I guess that foundations do not catch fire....

[thomlovessue]

I forgot to mention, if you don't touch it, the times are different. Like taking a small meat and cooking it, then stop the fire but do not touch the meat. If you add a raw meat then and restart the fire, the cooked meat will finish sooner.

[frillen]

Originally posted by thomlovessue:

Thanks for the confirmation. I was worried that you might take offense; it wasn't meant that way. So glad that you did not get upset. Yes, the raw meat/ cooked meat smoking in the same time does not make sense. Interesting about the old way of cooking, I guess that foundations do not catch fire....

No worries, you were right and I was wrong, no one can use a bad advice for anything

[BodyBagger]

I tested this a while ago with 1x smoker & 1x hobo stove: I was able to cook up to 40 or 50 small pieces of meat at the same time with the hobo stove (probably could have cooked more, but I stopped).

So, the benefits are: 1) The hobo stove saves time, and... 2) It saves fuel (resources... fibrous leaves). You only need to fuel your fire on the Hobo Stove 1x to cook 50 pieces of meat at the same time; with the smoker, you would need to fuel your fire 10x (5 pieces of meat x 10 separate cooking sessions = 50 pieces of small, cooked meat).

Once cooked on the Hobo Stove, you move the meat to the smoker to preserve it.

However, with a single smoker you simply don't have enough time to cook 40 or 50 pieces of small meat before the meat starts going bad (rotting). I found that you can cook approximately 30 pieces of small meat (maximum) on the hobo stove before the meet starts going bad—if you only have a single smoker... and you cook continuously until the job is done.

So, if you decide to use this cooking method to save time and fuel, you'll need 1x smoker for every 30 pieces of meat that you cook on the hobo stove. A few sessions of this in the early game means you probably won't have to cook for the rest of the game.

To answer your question, the hobo stove does not cook faster than the smoker. But, it does save time & resources (fibrous leaves).

ps I did not test with medium or large meat, so I do not know the maximum amount you can cook before the meat starts rotting.

[thomlovessue]

Hey BB, good to hear from you! But if you read the above, it does not save on fuel since it takes the same time on the smoker as raw meat. So any fuel used on the Hobo stove is wasted, unless you can eat all the meat you cooked before it goes bad.

[thomlovessue]

You can cook a lot of meat at once on the Hobo stove...

[BodyBagger]

Originally posted by thomlovessue:

Hey BB, good to hear from you! But if you read the above, it does not save on fuel since it takes the same time on the smoker as raw meat. So any fuel used on the Hobo stove is wasted, unless you can eat all the meat you cooked before it goes bad.

Really? I did not know that. I thought if the meat was already cooked the smoker would simply finish the job of smoking the meat. So you're saying that cooked meat still has to go through the process of cooking on the smoker before the meat is smoked?

[frillen]

Originally posted by BodyBagger:

Originally posted by thomlovessue:

Hey BB, good to hear from you! But if you read the above, it does not save on fuel since it takes the same time on the smoker as raw meat. So any fuel used on the Hobo stove is wasted, unless you can eat all the meat you cooked before it goes bad.

Really? I did not know that. I thought if the meat was already cooked the smoker would simply finish the job of smoking the meat. So you're saying that cooked meat still has to go through the process of cooking on the smoker before the meat is smoked?

Yes cooked meat seems to be treated like uncooked food in the smoker taking the same time to finish being smoked, I am pretty sure it hasn't always been like this, but I am not 100% sure, I haven't really played the game fully for a very long time, so maybe my memory isn't as good as I think it is :D

[DaBooch]

Never found much use for the Hobo stove. Smoker all the way.