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If you aren’t cooking in a dutch oven you are missing a lot of fun and some great food! Now nobody is going to carry a dutch oven backpacking; this is a ‘car camping’ option for sure.
If you need to get outfitted here’s what you’ll need and a few things that you may want (note the difference!)
Lodge 8 quart pre-seasoned dutch oven
Lodge dutch ovens are the industry standard. Some are cheaper but I think it’s hard to beat Lodge for fit and finish (and they are made in the USA). You do need a dutch oven with feet and a lid that is rimmed to hold coals; there are dutch ovens with domed lids for the kitchen but they don’t work well on a campfire.
Standard retail for these beauties is around a hundred bucks (!) But you can get one from Amazon for less than $60.00 at this writing (including shipping)
Lodge 8 quart dutch oven at Amazon
Lodge Camp Dutch Oven Lid Lifter
Do you absolutely need a fancy lid lifter? I use one and would not be without it; it makes things a lot easier. You’ll find yourself lifting the lid to check the progress of your cooking fairly regularly and while pliers or improvised hooks will do the job a lid lifter is much more secure and pleasant to use. Lid lifter at Amazon
Lodge Fire Gloves
Oven mitts and the like tend to burn when I have used them around campfires. Leather work gloves are too thin. What you want are insulated leather gloves designed to take the heat. I have used welding gloves successfully and these are basically the same thing. These cover your forearms and make handling hot pots and other stuff around the fire much easier.
Don’t try to save a few bucks by buying cheaply made gloves – they are thinner and won’t last. A couple of extra dollars for purpose built gloves is worth it.
Lodge Red Leather Insulated Gloves at Amazon
Dutch Oven Lid Stand
It’s certainly handy to have a parking spot for a dutch oven lid while you are stirring or adding ingredients. You can park your lid on another pot or a couple of empty cans but having stand assures you wont soil the inside of the lid or loose the coals on the top.
Lid stand at Amazon
Lodge Dutch Oven Table
You don’t need a dutch oven table but it will make life easier if you really get into dutch oven cooking. Lodge makes the Cadillac of dutch oven tables (and it costs a mint of money). A generous wind screen and sturdy legs raise the oven off the ground. This is on my wish list.
Dutch oven table at Amazon
Weber 7416 Rapidfire Chimney Starter
I do most of my dutch oven cooking over a wood campfire. If I can’t build a fire I’ll use charcoal and a chimney-type starter is important. A couple of crumpled sheets of newspaper on the bottom, charcoal on top, light the paper through the draft holes and you’ll have hot charcoal in a few minutes. The Weber 7416 has a cult following because it’s the best; it has a bail handle to make emptying the charcoal a lot easier.
Weber 7416 at Amazon
Poor Man’s Dutch Oven Table
A galvanized steel bushel basket or washtub is one way to contain the coals and holds the oven while cooking. It also carries all you gear and charcoal. We have one that was in the troop gear room when I showed up a couple of decades ago.
Bushel basket steel tub at Amazon
Lodge Pan Scrapers
Two polycarbonate Pan Scrapers for cleaning the stuck on food from dutch ovens without scratching. Each corner of the scraper is a different shape to easily clean every crevice or corner. Set of 2 Pan Scrapers at Amazon
We are an almost brand new troop, 3 years? There is no dutch oven legacy, and I earned my eagle 30 years ago, so there’s been a lot of brain cells turned off since I used a dutch oven.
You’re using a bit of jargon, etc. Can you explain some of the cast iron basics? I’m drooling over your discussion and ready to pop for an oven and lid lifter, but what’s this about seasoning? Why don’t you use soap? what’s wrong with metal cooking spoons/tongs?
Does someone want to put together a tutorial with pictures for us first timers?
Thanks,
JR
Hey John – check out these videos – they should answer all your questions.
Cast iron starts with tiny pores in the surface when it is new. As you cook with it, the surface fills in and becomes “seasoned” into a non stick surface. This seasoning prevents food from sticking and also protects the pot from rusting when not in use. There are as many tricks for perfect seasoning as there are for curing hiccups. Some cook bacon the first few times, some use crisco, some use olive oil, some do it over a fire, some in a bbq. You put the grease/oil in a completely dry pot.(If it has just been washed I put it in my heat source to make sure it’s dry) Then put it over a fire or in an oven and heat it. If it is your first time seasoning it, I would do it a few times but once you get it seasoned, it is a quick process. Once the pot is heated and then cooled, wipe the excess out with a paper towel.
The key is that if you wash it with soap, the seasoning can come off and the pot will rust. I have some old pioneer cookbooks which suggest using apple cider vinegar to clean the cast iron. It is a natural germ fighter and doesn’t strip the seasoning. I have it mixed about 1:3 with water in a spray bottle.
I don’t know why someone wouldn’t want to use metal utensils. As long as you’re not hacking around in it, the pot wouldn’t be hurt by it. I do have some wooden spoons I use but I also have metal that I use as well.
A few tips:
It is done when you smell it.
Stacking ovens works great and saves charcoal
Lodge Cast iron has a chart on their website for number of briquettes, but after you are comfortable, you can just eyeball it
Definitely get the charcoal chimney starter. I have never used lighting fluid.
For those who are willing to experiment or need to re-season their cast iron anyway…
As for aluminum, it seems to me that if your ‘oven is seasoned properly you shouldn’t be able to taste the difference, because the food never contacts metal only oxidized oil. Please explain to me the error of my thinking.
It seems to have eaten the URL I included…. let’s try this again….
sherylcanter. com/ wordpress/ 2010/ 01/ a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/
and
www. instructables. com/ id/ Best-Way-to-Season-Cast-Iron-Pans-Flax-Seed-Oil/ step2/ Oil-the-Pan/
Funny but true story. When I was a scout, our troop decided to have a desert cooking competition on a fishing outing. Each patrol was to cook a desert and the scoutmasters would judge the entries. One patrol was going to make peach cobbler but forgot to bring the canned peaches. After a little consultation, they decided to filet one of their catfish and place it in the bottom of the dutch oven. They cooked the cobbler and entered it into the contest. The yellow cake mix was a gorgeous golden brown. The scoutmasters were surprised to learn that they were eating a new creation, Catfish Cobbler. The patrol won an award for most original desert.
Our troop keeps all the Dutch oven supplies in a galvanized trash can for storage and transportation. Then put the Dutch oven on the flipped over trash can for cooking.
As for Dutch oven cooking skill, we group the boys into three scout crews and have them cook a meal on the Dutch oven during th scout meetings. That way they thoroughly learn their recipes and proper Dutch oven clean up.
Our adults LOVE cooking in a dutch oven. The boys will usually cook cobbler. I suggested the adults were going to compete with our recipes and the boys took the hint. They came up with a contest for each camping trip where the patrols will cook at least one meal in an oven. The details are still developing, but I was pleased they took to the idea. I laugh when I see the boys cook what they believe is an easy cleanup meal like walking tacos or burgers. They have so many pans and utensils to clean. A dutch oven meal is about as easy as it gets.
This is the approach I use for any cast iron in use for the troop. I take care of the seasoning when needed and the kids enjoy using the dutch ovens and cast iron frying pans.
I have to tell you that I’ve know some scouters that are absolutely neurotic about their dutch ovens. They wont cook tomato products, no metal utensil should touch the cooking surface, and only clean them with salt and newspaper—using water is heresy. They wouldn’t let scouts use their dutch ovens because they would ruin the precious, heirloom-seasoned cooking surface. Because of this a fellow scouter told me, “I love dutch oven cooking. It’s great food and I don’t have to worry about clean up. No one can touch their cast iron with a ten foot pole.” Their elitism was nauseating.
Recently a scouter presented a balanced approach; something more conducive to scout cooking. His only rule for clean up is don’t use soap. He provides a plastic scrubber and shows the scouts how to scrub off the food and how to heat and apply a coat of oal. If the boys ruin the seasoning, no big deal. He takes the pot home and re-seasons it on his propane barbeque.
My dad always made biscuits in the dutch oven on vacation. What a great breakfast.
If you want to try dutch oven cooking when backpacking, consider a Banks Fry-Bake (http://www.frybake.com/). That is a standard part of NOLS cooking. You put it on a camp stove, and build a twiggy fire on the lid. The approach is detailed in NOLS Cookery (http://www.nols.edu/books/cookery/). That is on my list to try.
I also agree with the above list. But I’d add Dutch oven liners and the tongs that allow you to lift the lid. This is usually used for aluminum oven though. Boy Scouts should use the lid lifter discribed above. Aluminum Dutch ovens are a whole other topic and raise the hair of Dutch oven “Chefs”. Aluminum ovens sometimes give a chalky flavor to foods, whereas iron ovens give a smoked flavor to foods. Most Dutch oven aficionados use only cast iron ovens.
oven liners are worth the cost in time. Very little cleaning, if any, is need when they are used. If you’ve spent an hour or two scrubbing burnt cobbler out of a dutch oven then you know.
Never used a liner. No scrubbing needed with a properly seasoned dutch oven.
Also I forgot a free Android app called Dutch Oven Calculator (available in the market)
The Dutch Oven Calculator calculates the number of charcoal briquettes needed to cook a given recipe in a camping Dutch Oven.
Might I also suggest the volcano for the dutch oven. I tried one of these at Wood Badge and was quite pleasantly surprised on how well it worked with the dutch oven.
The oven table is almost required here where we live. Ground fires are not allowed at camporees and some campsites and dry times in the spring. The table solves all of that. Highly recommended.
+1 on all of the above. We are avid Dutch Oven cooks in our troop. We don’t have a table (though I know a Scouter who has two!) but the stand looks like a good idea. And gloves for sure – we have heavy insulated restaurant-grade canvas gloves, but the leather ones are definitely better.
One thing we haven’t done in ages is Dutch Oven over an open fire. Charcoal is easier to regulate but you can’t beat lashing a tripod and hanging a pot from it to get back to traditional outdoor cooking.
In addition to the sources listed, try your local camping outfitters if you have good ones nearby (we have a couple excellent locally-owned ones “up north”). Sometimes they will give a discount to Scout troops – it can’t hurt to ask.