Secrets to Successful Cooking : Roughing It Made Easy: A Practical Guide to the Campers’ Dutch Oven

The Dutch ovens used for camp cooking should not be confused with the ordinary Dutch ovens found in many kitchens. Home-style pots are flat on the bottom and designed to fit over the burners on a range. The outdoor pots have three short legs that permit hot coals to fit under them. Indoor ovens usually have a rounded lid, sometimes of glass, that is unsuitable for holding coals. The flat iron lids for the outdoor ovens are flanged around the edges so they can hold coals easily. These lids often perform double duty on camping trips when they are turned upside down over coals and used as flat grills for pancakes or bacon.

Dutch oven camp cookery requires a remarkably small amount of space. Essentially you need just enough room to arrange a single layer of charcoal briquettes or pieces in a circle no larger than the bottom of the iron pot you plan to use. You’ll also need a spot to heat additional coals for use on the top of the oven or to replenish those used if the cooking period is a long one.

At the Great American Dutch Oven Cookoff in Logan, each team of contestants cooked on a flat dirt rectangle that was 4-by-6 feet. (Groundskeepers at the Utah State University simply removed the sod from the cooking areas and replaced it after the contest.) It was an ideal arrangement, but not necessarily a practical one for the average home cook.

Most of the contestants and other Dutch oven experts present had permanent barbecue pits or areas in their yards which could be adapted for this type of cooking. But several pointed out that it is just as easy to use a free-standing barbecue grill as it is to rely on a permanent installation.

Flat and Sturdy

The main thing to remember is that the bottom coals must be arranged in the bottom of the grill in a single layer on something flat and sturdy enough to hold the heavy pot. This could be a smoothed-over layer of sand or a grill rack with a fine enough grid so the Dutch oven’s legs don’t slip through. Otherwise you’ll have uneven cooking.

Anyone without a shallow portable barbecue can resort to a Rube Goldberg arrangement that has worked well for others. In order to test the cook-off recipes, The Times bought three 24-inch metal garbage can lids and balanced each of them, handle side down, on three bricks. This kept them perfectly level and firm. The lids were filled with damp sand, which was tamped down well and covered completely with several layers of heavy-duty foil. The foil not only provided a bit of reflected extra heat, it also made cleanup a snap.

In addition to the cooking base, you’ll need a spot where you can put extra foil or something else that is clean to hold the hot lid from the Dutch oven when you need to add food to the pot or stir the contents. Don’t forget that the lid usually will be both very hot and heavy, so be sure to put the foil on something that won’t be damaged by the heat.

Besides the cooking base and a good, well-seasoned Dutch oven or two, several other pieces of equipment will be needed for easy cooking. A good cast iron Dutch oven is heavy no matter what size it is. It heats evenly and stays hot; thus you’ll need heavy-duty oven mitts, some tongs suitable for handling hot coals and a heavy poker or sturdy claw hammer for lifting the hot lid on and off the pot.

Special Tools

At the cook-off, many of the contestants used special tools specifically designed for the latter purpose. One such set of tools, containing a short lid lifter and a longer, one is available from TWIN-K Enterprises, P. O. Box 4023, Logan, Utah, 84321. Cost is $19.95 plus $3 postage and handling. To order, send a check made to Twin-K Enterprises. Be sure to enclose your name and address and allow four to six weeks for delivery.

Knowing that we would prepare several dishes at once in testing the winning cook-off recipes, we used one of the three garbage can lids as a “fire base” for heating the coals to the white, ashy state needed. The other two were used for cooking. Two of the three Dutch ovens we used were 12 inches in diameter and one was 10 inches.

Knowledgeable Dutch oven cooks contend that a well-seasoned pot is absolutely essential. Otherwise it will have hot spots that will burn the food. Dr. Glen Humphreys of Salt Lake City, an experienced “Dutcher,” provided some well-seasoned advice on how to turn a brand new oven into a well-behaved pot. “There’s a coating on new ovens that needs to be scrubbed off with a good, mild soap,” he said. “Then dry (the oven) well and put it in a cold oven at home. Set your oven to 350 degrees and leave the Dutch oven in it until the temperature rises to that level. Then take the Dutch oven out and rub it well inside and out, lid and all, with an unsalted shortening or oil.” (Do this carefully. The pot will be hot.)

“Lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees and put the pot back in for about one hour. Watch for dry spots to appear and as they do, simply keep coating it. Wipe up any puddles that appear at the same time. Then just turn the oven off and let the Dutch oven sit there overnight,” he concluded.

And by morning you should have both a cool and a well-seasoned Dutch oven to use at will. Other Dutch oven users warned not to use soap to clean the pots, once seasoned, since it leaves a residue. Simply wipe them out, or use boiling water, if necessary. If something does happen to burn and stick and won’t come off, it may be necessary to use a wire brush to release it. In that case, clean it up, then go back and re-season it from scratch. With reasonably good care, however, a good Dutch oven should develop a satiny black patina that ensures nonstick cooking throughout the years.

Since this was our first attempt at camp cookery with a three-legged oven, we expected to have problems regulating the heat. Fortunately that proved to be a needless worry as we followed the good advice of one of the contestants, Than Larsen of Salt Lake City. Larsen and his wife, Joan, won the dessert division with a spectacular lemon meringue pie.

Larsen follows a simple rule of thumb for deciding how many coals are needed. “As a general rule, I start with three coals less than the diameter of my Dutch oven on the bottom and three coals more than the diameter on top,” he said.

Thus, since we were using a 12-inch oven for our first attempt, we arranged nine hot coals in the center of one garbage lid base. They were placed in an even pattern within a circular area no larger than 12-inch base of the pot.

We quickly found that it is better not to have a single coal directly in the center since it is likely to burn the middle of whatever you are cooking. Five or six coals around the outside edges and the others evenly arranged inside that circle worked very well. Once the pot was placed on the coals, we placed the lid on it and added 15 hot coals in an even pattern on the lid.

If you plan to serve something that will take two or three hours to cook through, you’ll need to add fresh hot coals about once an hour on a warm, windless day. If it’s windy, you may need to create a windbreak with a big piece of cardboard or metal and add coals more often. In any case, it’s advisable to turn the cooking pot about a quarter turn every 15 minutes to avoid hot spots when cooking most foods.

If you also have coals on top, give the lid a quarter turn in the opposite direction at the same time. It’s better to do this without lifting it unless there’s a need to check the liquid content or the browning of whatever is being cooked. Breads, pies and other pastries will require more frequent turns, approximately every five minutes in their case. With soups and other foods that can be stirred regularly, it isn’t necessary to move the pot.

Once you get the hang of Dutch oven camp cookery, it is easy. It’s all a matter of experience and understanding the principles that govern success.

We were particularly apprehensive about our first attempts at baking. Getting orange rolls to cook through and brown on both top and bottom was our initial major feat. Next time we’ll be more trusting and not open the lid so often, thus retaining a more even heat.

Temperature Control

There is always that fear that things will burn quickly; however, we found that it was easier to control the internal temperature in the pot than we thought. Adding and subtracting coals on both top and bottom, and changing the position of the pot will do this. In spite of our ineptitude and fears, the rolls turned out wonderfully well.

A paperback book, “The Great American Dutch Oven Cook Book,” filled with valuable tips on Dutch oven cookery and numerous recipes from previous cook-offs has been produced by the Festival of the American West, Utah State University. Edited by the Great American Dutch Oven Cookoff committee, the book is available by sending a check for $10, which includes postage and handling, to: Festival of the American West, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 84322-UMC01. According to cook-off chairman, Dick Michaud, there are a few copies of this book still in print and if additional copies are needed, the university will undertake another printing. A new, updated edition is expected to be released next summer.

One of the most important things a Dutch oven camp cook has to learn is that there is no hard and fast rule that guarantees success. You have to experiment and learn to benefit from failures. Wind or lack of it can change cooking times. Most important of all, an improperly seasoned oven will have hot spots that inevitably will lead to burned foods. In spite of the vagaries of both equipment and weather, however, Dutch oven cooking has been around . . . and has remained popular . . . for centuries. There’s just something about the way things taste when cooked over coals, whether it’s in a back yard or by a lake or in the mountains. It’s purely and simply great eating.