Dutch Oven Cooking
An Important Skill to Learn!
If you like to cook, even as a beginner, you will enjoy Dutch oven cooking! It is fun! Stack three Dutch ovens, and you can have a full meal cooking without relying on electricity. To top it all, you can enjoy good company, a campfire, and good scenery all at the same time!
Burying a Dutch Oven in Coals
This is the simplest method of Dutch oven cooking.
- In the morning, place your prepared food in the Dutch oven.
- Dig a hole about 20" x 24" in diameter. Line the sides with some flat stones. Place the oven in the center of the hole to make sure that it fits.
- Start the fire. Keep adding wood to keep the coals hot. Fill the hole with coals up to one-half to two-thirds full. Remove both fire and the remaining large pieces of wood. Place the Dutch oven in the center of the hole full of hot coals.
- Position the lid on top of the oven, with the handles pointing upward, and place from two to three-inch layer of hot coals on top of the lid. Cover with about a two-inch layer of dirt over the coals, followed by about two or three wet burlap cloths to keep the heat in. Cover with rocks to keep the cloths in place.
Your food will be ready in about six to eight hours. (A turkey will cook in about four to five hours.) Make sure to brush all the dirt and rocks prior to opening the oven. You do not want any dirt in your food.
The Ring of Briquettes Method
This method is very easy and many cooks use it. It works for any size of oven, and is a very good system for beginning Dutch oven cooks. There is no need to count coals. Just place the coals in a solid ring around the edge of the Dutch oven bottom. Then take one coal from between each in the solid ring, making it a spaced ring. Do the same solid ring around the edge of the Dutch oven top, except you do not take out any coal in between. Mathematically, this will result in two thirds of the coals being placed on top, and the remaining one third on the bottom. This will achieve for you a temperature of 350º. If you need a higher or lower temperature, add one coal on top for every 25º increase; remove one coal on the bottom for every 25º decrease. Since a coal lasts for about 30 minutes only, you will need to replace them about every 20 minutes.
Boiling or Deep Frying Needs
For moderate boiling, the solid ring will work. For a rolling boil, you need to crowd the rings on the bottom as closely as you can. For deep frying, you will need two beds of crowded rings on the bottom. It takes alternating between the two beds about every ten minutes to deep fry food.
More on Dutch Oven Cooking!
