Dutch Oven Helped Feed Those Who Tamed The West
Cooking outdoors for many of today's more modern families involves cooking hot dogs on a stick or throwing foil-wrapped potatoes into the fire. With cast iron skillets and cooking pots used on fry, boil and crisp it is hard to imagine how the pioneers baked bread, roasted meat and blended stews all in the same type of dutch oven. Typically made of heavy cast iron with three legs and a tight-fitting lid, the dutch oven was the versatile must-have cooking item for anyone cooking over an open flame.
The concept is simple in that the food was placed inside the pot with the lid securely in place. Charcoal was placed underneath to heat the bottom and sides of the dutch oven while more coals were set on top of the lid to provide all around heat to the oven. The lids typically had a raised lip around the edge to hold the coals in place and with a properly prepared and heated dutch oven any type of food could be cooked to pioneering perfection.
One of the keys to dutch oven cooking is the placement of the coals. They have to be evenly distributed under the pot and on the lid to prevent the creation of hot or cold spots on the food cooking inside.
Oven Was Microwave Of The West
In many ways, the versatility of the dutch oven made it the easiest and fastest way to cook a variety of food items. It could be used to bake break, cook a roast or cook complicated stews. All of the meal could be cooked in the same pot, as some pioneers used internal cast iron dividers to separate the content of foods that could cook in about the same amount of time.
As the wood-burning stoves and ovens, later power by electric and gas became more popular, the use of a dutch oven for cooking outdoors faded. Today, most of these units will be found rusting away in attics or garages but many campers are beginning to understand how their ancestors used these devices outdoors and are starting to experiment with recipes when they head out to the wilderness for the weekend.
The dutch oven was probably based on the design of the baking ovens used in the late 19th and early 20th century. These oven were lined with firebrick that was heated with a wood fire. When the bricks were hot enough, food was placed inside and the heat from the bricks in a sealed oven would bake whatever was inside.
