Will that work with an infected laptop?
If it has a hard drive for mass storage, yes. Laptop hard drives are usually easy to remove. You can just google the name of your laptop and the words "remove hard drive" or "replace hard drive" and you'll usually find tons of web pages that show you how to take it out, step by step.
If it has flash memory, I don't think you have to go to such stringent lengths. I'm not aware of any technical means for recovering deleted info from flash drives. Doesn't mean there isn't such technology, but I'm not aware of it.
Fire works pretty well too, but is kind of inconvenient and smelly. Also there's some heavy metals in there that can be nasty if they're heated to high temperatures.