Roasting pans to save your wood heater! SAY WHAT?!

[Magus]

See this thing? its an enamel roasting pan. maybe you make biscuits in one? anyway, I got this idea after having to patch my wood stove top with bolts and sheet steel.
these things are a giveaway at yard sales without the top, dirt cheap at the thrift stores, maybe a buck if they're scratched.
Right, to my idea. I LOVED to cook on my wood stove, but splatter and boil overs can be smelly and hard on your stove enamel. One year I put the front of a washing machine on there, it was enamel right? but I was still stuck with the smell if I spilled any and forget cleaning it! well one year I was using an old roasting pan as an ash catcher and it dawned on me, line that sucker with tinfoil for the winter, it'll hold even my Dutch oven, heck the only thing it won't hold is my three gallon stew pot, and I never use it anymore! So I went to Salvation army and bought up I think five of these things for a buck each, lined them in cheap foil and there we go!, they're spill proof, and light enough if I do screw up and let something boil over, I just move the pan, take the soiled one outside and yank the foil! No more smelling burned pinto bean, onion and ham hock soup for three hours and company is due in ten minutes!
And no more taking a chisel to my stove top EVER!

 

[Cabin Fever]

When my wife knows that she is going to make a mess on the stove top, like when canning season is here, she uses an old Boy Scout trick that I taught her. In Boy Scouts we would smear dish soap on the outside of our campfire cooking pots. The pot exteriors would turn black as usual from being on the campfire, but the soap made clean-up a breeze. Instead of scrubbing the pots with steel wool to remove the soot, the pots would clean up with a sponge.

So, now my wife smears the range top with dish soap before canning. She cannot believe how easy it is to remove the caked on crud that has boiled over and dried solid on the range top.

In the photo below she is just wiping away the baked on crud with a sponge because she "soaped" the range top first.

 

[Weedygarden]

Magus, I have one of those old enamel roasters, but with the lid. I found a similar one at a yard sale for $5, but this one is not enamel. We like the looks of the new one so much better than the old enamel one. I like the idea of repurposing things like you have done. I have to clean out the shed where the enamel roaster is, and my plan was to donate it to a thrift store. Maybe it can serve another purpose, but getting rid of stuff to clean out is what I need to do.

 

[Magus]

Waste not, want not,
I wonder if it would work on a range? a few years ago I made some 1" steel risers to hold pots off direct heat to prevent scorching,
they work quite well, but kind of ugly.