ESSE Ironheart

There’s just something romantic about a traditional wood stove. With its cast-iron façade, beautiful warming firebox, and fantastic oven, the ESSE Ironheart is everything you loved about Grandma’s wood stove, brought forward to the present day.

Made of high-quality steel, the dog-bone hotplate on top of the ESSE Ironheart is a fantastic cooking surface. Not only can it hold several large pots over both the hotplate and over the side (the entire hob is a cooking surface) but you can cook directly on top of the dog-bone, perfect for meats, breads and especially vegetables (add a dab of water and close the bolster lid to char-steam your veggies – beautiful).

Below the dog-bone, on the right-side is the oven, perfect for baking breads (try it on the bottom – you won’t be disappointed) or roasting. And with the heat from the firebox going around the entirety of the oven, providing an even heat, there’s a reason this has been called a dream baker’s oven. And right next to the oven is the superb firebox. Keeping the heat in is the spectacular firebricks, which have pegs installed to allow you to slide in the ESSE barbeque tray, allowing you to cook directly over the coals.

The ESSE Ironheart is packed full of little features to make your cooking experience that much better. A small dial on the stove directs the heat of the firebox either up to the stovetop or across to the oven, giving you more control over how your heat is distributed. When cooking on the stovetop, standing in front of a firebox can be extremely uncomfortable. Thankfully, ESSE includes a screen which clips onto the towel rail over the firebox, negating the heat and allowing you to stand and cook in front of your ESSE Ironheart comfortably.

If you put your ESSE Ironheart in a modern airtight home, you will find your fire will struggle to breathe due to the lack of incoming oxygen. To solve this, adding the Outside Air Intake brings fresh air from the outside of your home, through a duct into your Ironheart firebox, feeding your fire while not drawing in air from your room. And if you want to ensure your room stays as airtight as possible, upgrading your flue to Pivot’s Insulated Room Sealed Flue Kit ensures you don’t lose any heat through the flue, as is the case with traditional air-cooled flues.

There’s just something about the way a wood stove cooks food that hits different, and the ESSE Ironheart is a stellar wood stove, handmade in Lancashire in the United Kingdom by ESSE’s Master Stove Markers.