Outdoor Cooking On an enameled dutch oven
So you’ve got the best dutch oven you could find, and you want to get to cooking with it outside. Well hold on a second because I’m gonna give you some tips to make sure you don’t char the bottom of your pot. There is an art to making sure that you don’t end up with raw food on top, or unintended dried out jerky. This achieved by making sure you space out your coals when using an open fire. The ideal temperature for baking anything is 350 degrees, and to make sure the interior of your oven is cooking at that temp, you’ll want to use properly sized coals.
Now, to me using coals are a fancy way to ensure disaster. I’d suggest regular charcoal. They’ve been treated for cooking, and burn longer producing a much better heat for modern cooking purposes. That said, don’t run to the store and grab a bag of bargain briquettes. You bought an pot from the list of best dutch oven 2017 buyers guide, don’t cheap out now.
Now, I’m gonna do something that is probably gonna piss some of you, and introduce a little math to this Dutch oven cooking. The number of coals and how they are placed is the key element to getting that even heat need to get even heating. The magic formula is simple, if you have a 17 inch pot, then you’ll need a total of 34 coals, or 2 coals to every inch of the oven. More is not better in this regard, and will likely end up in a meal that is over cooked, as the timing eclipses what you thought was needed for cooking. Multiples of two are your friend in this instance and is a rule more than a choice.
As important as the amount of coals is the means by which you relegate the heat distribution. We achieve this with the placement of the briquettes. It’s gonna look like crop circles when we get done, laid out in a circular pattern, leaving about an inch of space between the coals. We want to be careful to space them and give each coal room to breathe. We also want to avoid placing our outdoor heating element directly center of the oven. Remember those burned bottoms? Yeah, that’s a sure fire way to end up with sticky sauce, or charred brisket.
Now believe it or not we’re also gonna place some briquettes along the lip of the oven, right along the lid. These will sit on the flange. The heat will conduct downward into the oven emulating the exact conductance we’d expect from cooking in an oven. Many people don’t believe how effective this is, but if you were to place a thermostat inside the dish at this time, I can almost guarantee you’d see a nice 350 degree temperature.
Now 350 is the magic number for me, but there is always someone who believes hotter is better. Since the great outdoors fire doesn’t have a knob, we can use additional coals to heat up the oven. Remember, our magic number is still two. So one additional coal on the top and bottom are enough to raise the temp 50 degrees. I find this to be lazy however, and rushing through the cooking process is likely to result in a less than satisfactory meal.
Now, to me using coals are a fancy way to ensure disaster. I’d suggest regular charcoal. They’ve been treated for cooking, and burn longer producing a much better heat for modern cooking purposes. That said, don’t run to the store and grab a bag of bargain briquettes. You bought an pot from the list of best dutch oven 2017 buyers guide, don’t cheap out now.
Now, I’m gonna do something that is probably gonna piss some of you, and introduce a little math to this Dutch oven cooking. The number of coals and how they are placed is the key element to getting that even heat need to get even heating. The magic formula is simple, if you have a 17 inch pot, then you’ll need a total of 34 coals, or 2 coals to every inch of the oven. More is not better in this regard, and will likely end up in a meal that is over cooked, as the timing eclipses what you thought was needed for cooking. Multiples of two are your friend in this instance and is a rule more than a choice.
As important as the amount of coals is the means by which you relegate the heat distribution. We achieve this with the placement of the briquettes. It’s gonna look like crop circles when we get done, laid out in a circular pattern, leaving about an inch of space between the coals. We want to be careful to space them and give each coal room to breathe. We also want to avoid placing our outdoor heating element directly center of the oven. Remember those burned bottoms? Yeah, that’s a sure fire way to end up with sticky sauce, or charred brisket.
Now believe it or not we’re also gonna place some briquettes along the lip of the oven, right along the lid. These will sit on the flange. The heat will conduct downward into the oven emulating the exact conductance we’d expect from cooking in an oven. Many people don’t believe how effective this is, but if you were to place a thermostat inside the dish at this time, I can almost guarantee you’d see a nice 350 degree temperature.
Now 350 is the magic number for me, but there is always someone who believes hotter is better. Since the great outdoors fire doesn’t have a knob, we can use additional coals to heat up the oven. Remember, our magic number is still two. So one additional coal on the top and bottom are enough to raise the temp 50 degrees. I find this to be lazy however, and rushing through the cooking process is likely to result in a less than satisfactory meal.