Wood Stove Home Cooking: Sweet Potato & Black Bean Chili for Two

Recipe from EatingWell's Test Kitchen

    Get out the soup bowls, gather the family and warm up by your Woodstock Soapstone stove for this cozy sweet potato & black bean chili recipe!

   

Ingredients:

• 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 1 small sweet potato, peeled and diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon ground chipotle chile
• ⅛ teaspoon salt, or to taste
• 1 ⅓ cups water
• 1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed
• 1 cup canned diced tomatoes
• 2 teaspoons lime juice
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Original Recipe Directions (for a traditional stove top):

    Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and potato and cook, stirring often, until the onion is slightly softened, about 4 minutes. Add garlic, chili powder, cumin, chipotle and salt and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add water, bring to a simmer, cover, reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook until the potato is tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Add beans, tomatoes and lime juice; increase heat to high and return to a simmer, stirring often. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer and cook until slightly reduced, about 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in cilantro.

Tips for cooking on your Woodstock Soapstone Stove:

    Think of cooking on soapstone as if you're cooking with a slow cooker.  The soapstone is radiating the heat over a longer period of time, so the things that do best are soups, stews, etc.  

    The Progress Hybrid and Ideal Steel Hybrids give a little more versatility for heat due to their griddle top and removable center burners respectively, but slow and steady is the way to go for any of our wood stoves!

    For this particular dish, we recommend starting with the onions, sweet potatoes and spices first to soften them.  Then, add the other ingredients and simmer for about an hour or until your sweet potatoes are as soft as you like them.

    

    Garnish with sour cream and/or shredded cheese with tortilla chips on the side and enjoy!

    Soapstone won't ever absorb spills or stain as it's a non-porous surface, but if this delicious recipe does happen to find its way onto your soapstone stove top, no problem-  clean up with some fine-grit sandpaper and steel wool.  Good as new!

    We'll be cooking up our own pot of this chili on one of our in-factory wood stoves soon- watch our Facebook and blog for updates and videos!

Recent Posts

•  2019-2020 Wood Stove Purchases Eligible for $300 Tax Credit 2/19/21
  
• Save Up to $1000 (Or More) With the 2021 Tax Credit for High Performance Wood Stoves! 2/8/21
  
• Working in Isolation 3/30/2020
•  Exceeding 2020 EPA Standards Since 1995! 2/07/2020
• Customer Images Keep Rolling In! 1/21/2020
•  Customer Installations! 1/9/2020
•  And the Free Stove Winner Is... 12/31/19
•  What a Hybrid Wood Fire Looks Like! 11/27/19
• A (Palladian) Phoenix Rises: The Restoration of a Damaged Palladian Wood Stove 6/19/19
• New Product Development - Custom Architectural Steel? 4/18/19
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• Arbor Day!  04/10/18
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• Luck of the Irish 03/10/18
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• Federal Tax Credit Instated for 2017  2/14/18
• It's Seed Catalogue Time! 02/09/18
• Photos of our Newest Survival Stove 01/19/18

2019-2020 Wood Stove Purchases Eligible for $300 Tax Credit

If you Purchased a Woodstock Soapstone Wood Stove between January 2019 & December 2020 a $300 Tax Credit is Still Available 

    In answer to the many questions about the new tax credit and cut-off dates, we want to note that qualifying wood stove purchases AND installations conducted from January 1st of 2019 to December 31st of 2020 are still eligible for the $300 Federal Tax Credit, which was in place during this timeframe.  ALL Woodstock Soapstone wood stoves shipped in 2019 and 2020 are eligible for this Tax Credit!  Click here for more information about this $300 Tax Credit.

    The new 26% Federal Tax Credit now in effect is only for wood stoves purchased and installed after January 1st, 2021, with a lesser 22% for purchases in 2023.  As we noted in the previous blog post, this new Tax Credit was signed into law December 20, 2020 and only stoves that passed the EPA 2020 certification AND tested at 75% or greater HHV efficiency using the EPA test method will qualify.

    Please remember that both the 2019-2020 $300 Tax Credit and the new 26% Tax Credit are tax Credits - you have to be paying taxes for the credit to have value. 

Additional Savings on Wood Stoves for Vermont Homeowners

    An Efficiency Vermont partnership has also established another incentive for Vermont homeowners to purchase clean, high efficiency wood stoves.  Professionally installed, qualifying high efficiency wood stove purchases are eligible for a $500 rebate at the point of sale, with a larger $600 rebate if an existing wood stove is removed and destroyed at the time of installation.  Vermonters are now in he enviable position of being able to get a $500 State Rebate on the purchase and installation of a high efficiency performance wood stove, an a 26% Federal Tax Credit on the remaining cost.  Read
more about the $500-$600 Vermont Rebate here.

The Absolute Steel Hybrid and a warm, happy dog

    Wood Heat Recognized as a Green Energy Source

    In our previous blog post, we talked about the new 26% Federal Tax Credit that applies to wood stoves meeting 2020 EPA standards and exceeding a 75% HHV efficiency rating.  This substantial Federal Tax Credit puts residential wood heat on par with solar, geothermal and wind energy, all of which have received similar federal tax credits as clean, renewable sources of energy.  

    Woodstock Soapstone Company has always been focused on clean burning and high efficiency.  We introduced the first hybrid wood stove in America (Progress Hybrid) 10 years ago, and followed that by introducing new hybrid designs in 2013 (Ideal Steel Hybrid), 2015 (Absolute Steel Hybrid), and 2017 (Navajo and Survival Hybrids).  We are delighted that the federal government recognizes residential wood heating as a clean, renewable source of energy.

    Click here to subscribe to our e-mail list to receive updates

Save Up to $1000 (Or More) With the 2021 Tax Credit for High Performance Wood Stoves!

New 26% Tax Credit Applies to Stove Purchase Price and Any Related Costs for Installation

       The Biomass Thermal Energy Council (BTEC) has been working to implement the Biomass Thermal Utilization (BTU) act for more than a decade - and it’s finally been realized!  On December 21st 2020, Congress signed into law a 26% federal tax credit for wood stoves AND wood stove installations complying with these BTU revisions…Meaning more accessibility to clean-burning and modern wood heat for you.

      What makes a wood stove eligible for the huge 26% tax credit? 

1. The stove must meet the 2020 EPA standards 
2. The stove must have a minimum efficiency of 75% (HHV). More about High Heat Value (HHV) below. 
3. The stove must be purchased and installed in 2021 (there will be a 22% credit available for 2022-2023)

Lucky for you, ALL Woodstock Soapstone wood stoves are among the elite group that meet these qualifications.

Comparing High Heat Value (HHV) and Low Heat Value (LHV) Not all wood stove efficiencies are created equal. There are two different metrics for understanding wood stove efficiency: High Heat Value (HHV) and Low Heat Value (LHV). Woodstock Soapstone, like the EPA, uses High Heat Value (HHV) for our efficiency measurements.         High Heat Value (HHV) tests are run using cord wood with approximately 20% moisture content, generating efficiency results similar to what wood stove owner’s experience in their homes.         

        Low Heat Value (LHV) tests are run as if the wood had zero moisture content, generating results that look better, but aren't reflective of a typical wood stove owner's real world experience.         As an example, a stove tested using HHV may have an overall efficiency of 75% and an artificially higher efficiency of 80% when using the LHV metric. Just How Far Will a 26% Credit Go? For a Woodstock Soapstone Progress Hybrid wood stove, the tax credit would realize about a $1,120 credit off of it’s roughly $4,300 retail price. Pair with this an additional 26% tax credit on the installation of the stove itself, and any Woodstock Soapstone wood stove becomes more accessible than it’s ever been. Progress Hybrid Retail Cost (with Ash Pan): $4,305.00 Federal 26% Stove Tax Credit: -$1,119.30 Cost After Tax Credit: $3,185.70 Plus, the cost of installation qualifies for the same 26% credit. That means 26% on pipe, chimney and labor!

Working in Isolation

We have a small number of employees at work every day (because we have to issue paychecks, keep up with all the various state and federal requirements for employee leave, answer questions, and keep the loading docks open for shipments in and out).  When we’re not  busy with essential tasks, we have replaced all the lights in the laser cutting area with LEDs, and we have started to assemble a new paint booth (see photos below).

We’ve also worked on a new damper system for the Progress Hybrid, which we will show in the coming days.  Yes, it will retrofit existing stoves, so stay tuned.

LED bulb installation in the laser area 

Installation of our new paint booth

Exceeding 2020 EPA Standards Since 1995!

While other manufacturers are struggling to certify stoves to the EPA 2020 standards, the wood stoves we’ve been producing since 1995 have been exceeding the new, stricter wood stove standard!

For the last 25 years we have been building and selling the cleanest stoves in the United States!

Customer Images Keep Rolling In!

With the recent cold snap, we are getting more and more images of our beautiful, high efficiency stoves from customers in different parts of the country. Below are a few of our newest images, and we're sure more will be coming!

Customer Installations!

Customers have been submitting some wonderful installation images of and comments about their Woodstock Soapstone stoves recently, and we wanted to share a few of them here on our blog. 

This group is a nice representation showing one of our newer wood stoves, the Progress Hybrid, our largest gas stove, the Fireside Franklin, as well as one of our original models, the Fireview/Model 201 (built before 1996). Enjoy!

And the Free Stove Winner Is...

A big congratulations to Joyce Cooper, the winner of our Free Survival Hybrid Wood Stove giveaway! Joyce's name and email were picked at random at noon on December 31, 2019, and Joyce was notified immediately by email.

Joyce called right away both excited and surprised that she actually won! Turns out that Joyce has been looking at our Cottage Franklin Gas Stove to install in a home she is just starting to build in NH! Of course we wanted Joyce to have the stove that would make the most sense for her and her family, so we applied the full price of the Survival Hybrid as a credit to the SALE price of the Cottage Franklin Gas Stove. A win for everyone!

And a big thank you to Joyce for sending such a great photo!

Winner of our FREE STOVE Giveaway!

What a Hybrid Wood Fire Looks Like!

Woodstock introduced the first hybrid wood stove
in the USA in 2011

The pictures of a Progress Hybrid below just came in last week from a new customer in Pennsylvania.  The pictures show one thing that many of our customers like about our hybrid stoves - there’s a lot of flame activity, especially at the top of the firebox where secondary combustion occurs.  The flame activity can be quite mesmerizing, and can also be adjusted by changing the amount of air feeding the fire.

Hybrid Secondary Combustion Flames:  they occur at the top of the firebox, where we introduce combustion air to ignite exhaust gasses.