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Andrew Beahrs

Andrew Beahrs is the author of Twain’s Feast: Searching for America’s Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens (Penguin, 2010) and two historical novels, Strange Saint (Toby, 2005) and The Sin Eaters (Toby, 2008). He has written about food and history for Smithsonian, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Gastronomica. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

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A traditional three-stone fire—such as this one in Lalibela, Ethiopia—transfers as little as 10 percent of the heat it produces to a cooking pot.

Three-Stone Fire

By Andrew Beahrs

Fall 2013 | Reporting

The three-​stone fire remains nearly universal among the 3 billion people who rely on solid biomass fuels like firewood, charcoal, and dung. But the three-​stone fire is hellishly inefficient, transferring as little as 10 percent of the heat it produces to a pot and the food it holds. 

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