A number of years ago, on a raft trip down the Dolores River in extreme southwestern Colorado, I experienced several significant events: four days of freezing drizzle, sheer terror, and Dutch oven cooking.
Of the three, the Dutch oven meals were by far the most agreeable, and the culinary marvels whipped up by Bill Haas and Mike McDonnell, our guides and trip chefs, more than compensated for the daily bouts with hypothermia and raft-eating suck holes.
At the end of each day, Bill or Mike would prepare a delicious meal: chili, beef stew and baked bread, pineapple upside-down cake, muffins—and the chill of the new desert spring would melt softly away.
Back home, I discovered I’d put on weight, not terribly surprising considering the circumstances, and had gained a new respect for the river savvy of my mentors. I also developed a sudden craving for a big, black Dutch oven of my own, so I bought one—$40, cash money.
Dutch ovens (D.O.s) are not a new idea. They apparently evolved from the huge iron cauldrons used by cooks in the 13th century, or possibly from the smaller, three-legged pots used by chefs in the 16th century. They certainly were horse-packed, hand-carted, and covered-wagoned across the country by the early settlers, and doubtless made many a gamy buffalo steak that much more palatable.
Interestingly, unlike almost everything else from that era, the D.O.’s basic form has changed little, a testimony to its inherently sound design. If great-great grandma pioneered the dusty Oregon Trail or plodded behind a team of oxen through Cumberland Pass, she probably fixed the family’s meals in a cast-iron oven very similar to the ones used today.
Of course, you can’t take even a lightweight Dutch oven on a backpacking trip, or on any other venture where weight and size are major considerations. But for almost every other outdoor cooking application, the venerable D.O. shines. Do you like fresh bread? Venison roast? No problem. A good oven serves up both with style and flair. Pancakes, too. And stews, casseroles, fried fish, and apple pie are also possible. Most everything, in fact, that can be prepared in your electric or gas oven at home can be made in a Dutch oven.
Placed over coals in a fire pit and loosely covered with embers, then soil, your D.O. will cook all day, and it will be ready with a hot meal even after a day-long outing. Indeed, blueberry cobbler served this way was a ploy used by my old scoutmaster to quiet his charges and, even taking into consideration the fact that I’ll eat large quantities of almost anything, the results, as I remember, were delicious.
For something so pragmatically unsophisticated, the Dutch oven comes in a wide variety of styles. There are eight, 10, 12, and 14-inch sizes; flat-bottomed ovens; ovens with little squatty legs; round and flat-topped D.O.s; and models made of cast iron or aluminum.
Your options for camp use are considerably fewer, however. The flat-bottomed, rounded-lid types, popular for indoor casseroles and roasts, are as functional in the field as Bermuda shorts in the Arctic. What you want is the genuine article: a 12 to 14-inch, three-legged oven with a flat lid and heavy wire bail. The flat lid holds coals or briquettes in an even, heat-distributing arrangement, and the raised lip on the better models keeps the coals from spilling over the edge when the lid is turned. The legs allow the D.O. to remain above the heat source, enhancing air circulation.
For generations, any material for a Dutch oven was fine, provided it was cast iron. But today’s pioneers have a choice. For the Space Age has produced not only “real” imitation leather, Spandex pants, and computerized fish-finders, but cast-aluminum ovens as well. Let the traditionalists wail. The ovens aren’t half bad.
Cast iron’s advantages are still important, and the non-stick surface and even heat distribution of a well-seasoned, iron D.O. remain attractive features to many. But aluminum is light, easy to clean, and, admittedly, nice looking—a brand new aluminum Dutch oven sparkles like a gleaming, midget spaceship.
A hot aluminum oven will also warp if dipped in a stream, and it can, apparently, deform if placed in extremely intense heat, although it is hard to imagine any cooking need that would require such high temperatures. Cast-iron D.O.s, on the other hand, are built like bomb shelters, and they are highly comparable in weight to small, imported cars.
You’ll need a few supplementary items to round out your outfit, but most can be found around the house: pliers, leather gloves, and food tongs. The Boy Scouts make a pair of lightweight and inexpensive aluminum pliers designed especially for Dutch oven use.
If you choose traditional cast iron, you’ll first have to season your oven. (Actually, you may first have to wash it. Some are coated with a rust inhibitor at the factory.) I once worked with a chef who merrily dropped his cast-iron pans and pots in the deep-fat fryer. There they sat, sizzling and bubbling their way to developing a rich, black patina.
Happily, you need not locate a restaurant or cooperative chef. There are simpler and more effective methods you can use at home. The easiest, perhaps, is to coat the entire inner surface of the pot, including the lid, with cooking oil. Cover the bottom with an additional one-quarter inch of oil; replace the lid; and bake at medium heat in your home oven for an hour or so. To avoid the heavy, thick odor, some elect to undertake this procedure outdoors, over coals. Either way works.
A well-seasoned D.O. is a joy to use. All but the most tenacious of burnt-on foods are easy to remove—a quick swipe with a plastic scrubber generally does the trick. Some campers insist on cleaning with soap and water, and herein lies the subject of much debate: to soap or not to soap. Although for reasons of convenience I much prefer to clean my oven with only a plastic scrubber, I have found that an occasional very light washing with water and dish detergent does not inordinately affect the seasoning, as some critics claim. In any case, you should always rewipe your D.O. with a thin film of oil. This will preserve the patina and deter rust.
One of the quiet delights of Dutch ovens is that, with imagination tempered by common sense, you really can cook almost anything. Even the slightly concave lid placed upside down directly on a bed of embers makes a highly efficient frying pan. But the D.O. really shines when baking.
A Dutch oven boils from the bottom up, but bakes from the top down. For light and well-browned baked goods, Bill Haas recommends a mix of 18 charcoal briquettes on the lid and six underneath the bottom. Bill should know about this; he’s been at it for years, and I’ve always found his three-to-one ratio effective. Some camp cooks slide the top coals against the lid’s lip, claiming reduced burning. Others distribute them evenly across the top. To boil stews, chili, and the like, simply reverse the ratio or place the oven directly over a heat source.
Charcoal briquettes sometimes burn unevenly, and wood coals almost always do. You can minimize distribution problems by spacing your coals as uniformly as possible around the top and bottom. Beyond that precaution, the D.O. has a clever, built-in thermostat: a freely spinning lid. Several times during the course of baking, I don my gloves and, with pliers, spin the lid 180°, effectively redistributing my heat supply. Don’t try this without gloves unless you have exceptionally nimble and flame resistant fingers.
Occasionally, briquettes or coals will fade and lose much of their warmth, but this, too, is easily checked. Quickly lower your hand, palm open, to a point four to five inches above the lid. Here you should feel a fairly substantial wall of heat. If not, restoke the oven with coals. Incidentally, a three-to-one ratio of briquettes (18 on top, six on the bottom) will produce, according to informed sources other than myself, an inside oven temperature of approximately 350°.
Doubtless you’ll want to peek at food in progress, particularly baked goods. But a Dutch oven is not an electric stove with an accommodating glass porthole. By lifting the lid, you’ll lose precious heat, destroy the steam seal, and extend your cooking time proportionately. That said, I must shamefully admit that I always peek at food. You might as well tell a 10-year-old to keep his hands out of the cookie jar.
In addition to a cast-iron or cast-aluminum oven, gloves, pliers, and food tongs, a number of additional items are invariably handy to have in camp. Invest first in a good supply of cooking oil. A well-seasoned oven uses progressively less oil with time, but a slow-cooking stew or other water-based meal will leach much of the seasoning from the iron, necessitating another thick coating of oil. Aluminum, of course, seasons poorly, if at all, and will require generous amounts of oil with each use. Paper towels are handy, and I use them to re-coat the inside of my iron oven, but they’re convenient for a dozen other uses as well. A well-supplied camp chef also packs lighter fluid, salt, pepper, baking powder, commercial seasoning mix, and whatever else his particular recipes call for.
Oddly enough, obtaining and lighting suitable coals is probably the toughest part of the entire cooking process. Though some outdoorsmen, especially those with access to long-burning hardwoods, use the coals from their campfires, nearly everyone I know finds it simpler and more efficient to use ready-made charcoal briquettes. Lighting them is simple, but time consuming. First, dump them in a fire or an outdoor grill, or stack them in any clear space on the ground. Then drench the briquettes with lighter fluid and ignite. The best method I’ve found, though, is one I picked up quite recently from an informative booklet by John G. Ragsdale, Dutch Oven Cooking (Pacesetter Press, Houston, Texas). With a can opener, punch a series of holes around the perimeter of a one-gallon or a half-gallon coffee can, just above the bottom (not in the bottom). Loosely wad a sheet or two of newspaper in the can; stack the briquettes on top; give the whole works a squirt of lighter fluid; and fire it up. Remember to wad the paper loosely, as tightly packed newsprint simply won’t burn. I generally allow a half-hour for the coals to glow red-hot, occasionally adding briquettes to the can and re-sorting them with food tongs.
Unless you’re already an accomplished chef, keep your recipes fairly straightforward at first. You are, after all, cooking one-pot meals. Initial success will build confidence for more elaborate efforts in the future, although you’ll find that it’s virtually impossible to ruin anything in a D.O. Your food, no matter how simple, will likely emerge moist and delicious.
Traditionally, D.O. cooks bake breads by pouring batter directly into a well-greased oven. The pot is then covered, and the lid spun occasionally for even heat distribution.
You may, alternately, use round aluminum pans to bake breads, biscuits, and so forth. The main advantage here is a savings on cleanup. Make sure the pan’s diameter is sufficiently smaller than the oven’s diameter, though, or you won’t get the pan out.
Almost all baked goods cook evenly and well with just one application of briquettes. Stews and roasts may take longer, but a quick check with the palm of your hand will detect any temperature drop. When cooking these foods, have backup briquettes burning for such a contingency, and apply them as needed.
Several years ago, in a burst of financial inspiration, I decided to start a bike-touring business, culminating each day with an elaborate feast prepared in my Dutch oven. The business was a solid failure, but one prototype tour or, more precisely, that evening’s meal, was a memorable success. We ate extravagantly, and the steak, lobster, fresh bread, stew, and muffins were out of this world.
Dessert was a fairly mediocre strawberry shortcake (poor recipe), but we were too sated at that point to care.
Dutch oven cooking is truly an outdoor art, but it is a simple art easily mastered. It is also a delightful pastime and an oven is an ageless investment that will provide solid and dependable service for a generation.
Read Next: How to Cook Venison
Dutch Oven Recipes
Haberl’s Red Cabbage
- 1 to 2 shredded red cabbages
- ½ pound bacon, diced
- 1 tbsp. caraway seeds
- ¼ cup honey
- ½ cup vinegar
- 1 tbsp. lemon juice
Sauté bacon on oven lid, and drain grease. Add all ingredients to oven, cover, and bake (three-to-one ratio) for 15 to 20 minutes, or until cabbage is tender.
Cinnamon Bannock
- 3 cups white or whole wheat pastry flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp. oil
- 3 tbsp. dry milk
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 3 tsp. cinnamon
- ¼ cup water
Mix dry ingredients, and add oil and water to form a relatively dry loaf. Place in bread pan, and bake in a covered oven (three-to-one coal ratio) for about 30 minutes.
Blueberry Cobbler
- 2 cups biscuit mix
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups milk
- 1 cup shortening
- 1 can or pint of blueberries
Mix all ingredients, pour into a greased aluminum pan, and insert in the oven. Cover, and bake (three-to-one coal ratio) for 45 minutes to one hour.
Buckwheat Pancakes
- ½ cup white flour
- 1½ cups buckwheat flour
- ¾ cups buttermilk
- 3 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- ¼ tsp. salt
- 2 tbsp. oil
Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly. Add the oil and buttermilk, mix quickly. Place the D.O. lid upside down on hot coals, and spoon the batter onto the well-oiled lid. (You may also fry pancakes directly on the bottom of the oven.) The lid is slightly concave, so oil will gather in its center. Between batches, redistribute the oil.
Beef Goulash
- 3 pounds beef, cubed
- 1 cup celery, diced
- 1 cup potatoes, diced
- 1 can mushroom soup
- 2 tbsp. oil
- salt and pepper to taste
Brown beef in oil. Add celery, potatoes, and soup; cover oven, and cook over fire of coals approximately two hours, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are tender. Season to taste. (Note: any venison steak can be substituted for beef.)
Basic Chili
- 2 to 4 pounds ground beef, venison, or lamb
- 1 cup chopped onions
- 3 cups canned tomatoes, chopped
- 8 cups canned kidney beans
- 2 tsp. salt
- 2 to 3 bay leaves (or 1 tbsp. tarragon)
- 2 tbsp. chili powder
- ¼ cup oil
Sauté beef and onions in oil until thoroughly cooked. Add remainder of ingredients to oven. Cover and cook over a low fire or coals for approximately one hour, stirring occasionally.
Meat Loaf
- 3 pounds ground beef
- 2 cups bread crumbs or shredded bread
- 2 or 3 eggs
- 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 bell pepper, chopped
- ½ cup fresh parsley, chopped
- salt and garlic to taste
Mix all the ingredients; place in an oiled bread pan or casserole dish; bake in covered oven (three-to-one coal ratio) for approximately one hour.
This story was originally published in the November 1986 issue of Outdoor Life.
Read the full article here
