Is it feasible to cook via a forge?

Amateur blacksmith here.

So, first, let me caution that two of the things that are around any forge are toxic chemicals like borax, and lots and lots of tiny metal fragments that would be very bad to get inside you. So I don't recommend ever actually cooking around a forge.

If you were to do so anyway, though, how you would do it is by heating a large flat piece of steel to red-hot in the forge, and then holding that steel above or below the thing you wanted to cook. There's actually a standard medieval cooking tool called a salamander that works on this principle, just starting in a fireplace and not a forge.

I cannot comment on whether anyone actually cooked this way at one or more ABANA meetings, given how unsafe it would have been to do so.

The (probably apocryphal) story behind "Pittsburgh rare" steaks is that steel workers in Pittsburgh would cook a steak on a steel ingot out of a blast furnace, or directly on the furnace. The high heat would blacken the outside within seconds, while leaving the inside extremely rare.

If that sounds tasty to you, then, well, problem solved. If you wanted your steak more reasonably cooked, you could simply allow the steel to cool for a bit longer before you started cooking on it.

Fun idea

A forge fire is just a big open coal BBQ grill and very hot.

A bellow will help getting high temperature, maybe too high for proper grilling; you'd need to be careful.

The anvil is pretty much useless for cooking, it is away from the fire and will not get very hot; you could use it to hold a piece of meat while you hit it with a hammer to tenderize it

You could use the forge/anvil to create yourself a nice iron pot and use it to cook food.

See : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgzEx2_PO1Y&ab_channel=ChandlerDickinson

I have cooked on a forge numerous times, but my forge was a bit different from most modern forges. The main difference being that we used charcoal instead of propane. It was an old-school blower forge where you crank a wheel around to push air up through the bottom. You get a pile of coal or charcoal, make a fire that gets the coal or charcoal to start glowing, then crank it to get it hotter. It's not that different from what I think is called an African charcoal stove. We would get it hot, then put a grate on the coals, then a cast-iron on the grate. Voila! In case you were wondering, most people don"t use charcoal anymore because it takes so much effort and time to make. Coal burns about 1/3 the rate of charcoal but produces the same heat (and some nasty smoke). But obviously, propane is even easier than coal. Most people in developed countries and factories who do any smithing use propane, but I think charcoal is the best. Nothing noxious, no risk of explosions, and the fuel is renewable.

In a location with furnaces , you can always have a hot lunch by finding a warm location. But the surroundings are not supportive for cooking. However simple tings like baking apples is good ; core it fill with sugar and cinnamon and heat. Apples can be baked surprisingly fast at 500 +F , but do not leave them in a furnace too long. It seems like seconds to go from great caramel sauce to tar.

Forges operate at extremely high temperatures. Steel gets that "glow" of red around 900°F/480°C. So if we want to consider the coldest possible temperature, that's it (but likely much higher).

There are a limited number of foods that could be cooked at that temperature and be enjoyably edible. For most foods, temperatures that high will burn the outside before cooking the inside.

You'd really be limited to things like flatbread, pizza, or very thin strips of meat. Essentially things that have a lot of surface area to cook, but not much internal mass that needs to be brought up to temperature. Maybe even something like popcorn? Either way, that surface-to-mass ratio will be important.

There may be other things that are possible but not practical given enough creativity. Ex) You could heat the anvil, then use it's thermal mass to cook on. Because of the impractically, but possibility, it feels more fun as a world building exercise than a cooking one.