More than two-thirds of the world's population is relying on biomass fuel to meet their cooking and heating energy-requirements. Traditional biomass stoves operate at low efficiency and cause severe health problems and pollute the environment. Due to higher quantity of fuel use, these cookstoves increase the burden on fuel management. Several test protocols are being used across the world for evaluating the performance of cookstoves. One of the major challenges of existing protocols is to narrow down the gap between the test results obtained under lab conditions and actual cooking conditions. Hence, there is a need to evolve an improved test method that can reflect the stove performance under field conditions. This paper is aimed to reduce the gaps in test methodology in such a manner that the test results obtained in the lab are comparable with the results of actual cooking carried out in the kitchen. An improved test method, which includes a residual heat recovery phase, is proposed to evaluate the performance of cookstoves. Design parameters related to technical, social and economic aspects were identified. Common errors that occur during the water boiling test were identified and methods to minimize such errors were also proposed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.