Dutch Oven Cooking for Beginners - Camp Cook Week Day 1 - Mountain Mom and Tots (2024)

UPDATED APRIL 2018 Dutch Oven cooking can be the most delicious way to prepare food outdoors…if you know these beginner tips.

Welcome to Camp Cooking Week! We’ll be cooking outdoors all week long so come back tomorrow for more outdoor cooking tips and tricks.

Dutch Oven Cooking makes some tasty outdoor food. I mean real good. Setting a cast iron pot directly in the coals is a great way to get some delicious dinner (or breakfast or lunch) and once you know the basics it’s a fairly straightforward process.

1. Heat the coals.
2. Prepare the food and place it in the dutch oven.
3. Place the coals and let the food cook.
4. Enjoy!

Before we get to the food, we’ve got to talk heat. Dutch ovens are great at staying warm for a long time, but getting them warm takes a while.

We start our charcoal briquettes in a charcoal chimney, a nifty metal tube with space at the bottom for a small fire. This heats the coals quicker – in 15 to 20 minutes – just enough time to get your ingredients together.

Anything you can bake in an oven or cook on a stove top you can make in a Dutch Oven as long as you heat things up right. But just how many coals do you need when dutch oven cooking?

A quick guide I’ve heard for how many coals you need – take your diameter and multiply by two. One third go on bottom, two thirds on top.The fact that more coals go on the dutch oven lid when baking throws a lot of people.

The most common dutch oven size is a 12 inch diameter. That’s the size we have so we need 24 coals total, 16 on top, 8 on bottom. Here’s a convenient chart from Dutch Oven Mania that gets more precise.

Photo fromwww.dutchovenmania.com

You put down some hot coals, put your dutch oven on then add more coals to the top. How long until you can eat that mouthwatering meal? Dutch oven cooking is for the patient.

Most recipes require at least 45 minutes of cooking time, rotating the oven and lid every 10-15 minutes for even heating.Rotating the oven and lid often during cooking prevents burn spots and gives more even heat for your food. Don’t forget to stir too!

I like to line up the lid handle with the pot handle when I begin cooking. When a ten minute timer goes off I rotate the lid a quarter turn in one direction and rotate the oven body a quarter turn in the other direction.

You may not want to wait 45 minutes or more for dinner, but there’s a benefit for having your food cooked this way – it stays warm for hours. The cast iron in a Dutch Oven holds its heat well so going back for seconds is never a problem.

You’ve waited patiently but now your ready to eat! How do you get those coals off without getting ash in your food? Trust me, it’s happened. Dutch Oven Cooking works best if you have the right tools.

The most important gear item you need for dutch oven cooking is of course a dutch oven. It should be cast iron, rust free (although you can clean and reseason it if you need to), have a holder handle on the pot, legs on the bottom and a flat top to hold coals.

They make Cast Iron Dutch Ovens for regular kitchen use that may not have those features. Those still make tasty meals, but if you’re using the dutch oven outdoors the legs on the bottom, holder handle and flat top lid are essential.

After the Dutch Oven itself, the most important tool we use is a lid lifter. When the dutch oven gets hot and the lid handle is surrounded by coals it is near impossible to move it without burning yourself. Hence the lid lifter.

We also wear fireproof gloves and use barbeque tongs to help place coals and of course we have a charcoal chimney to help heat the coals. Having the right tools makes dutch oven cooking a burn-free, ash-free process, plus it’s the only way to not burn yourself.