When Dr. Winiarski and I first walked around San Nicolas, the ranch in Mexico where I have a house, he surprised me by saying that the Rocket stove wouldn't save a tremendous amount of firewood. He saw how well the ranchers made fires and thought that a fuel efficient stove would save only 30% to 40% more firewood.
When people are careful and expert, the indoor open fire (or three stone fire, as it's sometimes called) is a relatively efficient cooking method.
Traditional methods can work very well. In fact, the indoor, open fire can be more efficient than higher mass, supposedly fuel efficient stoves. Of course, this probably plays a part in the cultural resistance to new methods of cooking. The introduced methods are not necessarily superior in every way.
God made fire, people made pots. The trick in improving efficiency is not so much to improve the efficiency of combustion, but to improve the transfer of heat into the pot. The skirt around the pot is very important. The stove body keeps wind away from the fire, keeping the fire hot enough for more complete combustion to occur. The stove "forces" users to feed wood more slowly, to make better fires. It can be tempting to build an overly large open fire, since a large fire won't go out as easily.
Fuel efficient stoves can save a lot of fuel
compared to open fires outside in the wind. They can play a very important part in decreasing the need for large amounts of firewood for cooking.
However, an indoor, open fire is not necessarily an inefficient cooking method. It takes a low mass stove with a skirt to improve upon it. A high mass stove can easily use more fuel than a simple indoor fire, especially when the stove isn't in constant use, which is frequently the case. It really all depends on how carefully people make fires.
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