Dutch Oven Cooking

Tonight I had my husband teach me how to use our dutch oven.  It was defiantly WAY easier than I had thought it would be.  In the end I think I will have my father-in-law come over and help me.  :) 

When using a dutch oven there are different things you need to do with it.  Treat it like you would any cast iron.  To clean  your dutch oven NEVER use soap in your dutch oven. After you have cleaned it stick it in a warm oven for a little while.  When it comes out spray pam on it and let it dry.  If you dont use your oven for a while stick it in your oven through a cleaning cycle and it will burn off any smell or any other bacteria that has gotten into it. 








Dont use metal utensils.  They can/will scrape off the cast iron.  That is what I know for now.  When I have my father-in-law come down I will ask him some more questions and post more about using your dutch oven.  There are so many websites out there about dutch ovens.  Check them out.  There is tons of useful info out there.

Tonight we made a cherry cobbler.  I will give you the recipe and tell you how to put it together.  Please dont get scared off when you see how hard it is! 

Cherry Cobbler

1 can cherry pie filling
1 10oz sprite or 7up can
1 box cake mix (any flavor you like)

Dump the cake mix into the dutch oven.  Pour in the soda and stir.  Not much, just for a few seconds.  When you are done with that open the can of cherries and evenly poor them over the cake mix.

Thanks it!  Oh, cook it for about 1 hr.

I really was surprised how easy it was to prepare the oven and cook in it.  Now, depending on how big your oven is will depend on how many briquettes you will need.  The one we used was a 10" so we needed 20 briquettes.  10 on top, 10 on bottom.

We took an empty #10 and poked holes in the bottom so there would be oxygen for the fire.  After we poked the holes we used a can opener to take the bottom out.  We placed a piece of tin foil on the cement outside and the "shell" of the #10 can on top of that.  We then put 20 briquettes in the can.  Lit them and waited for them to turn white.  While we waited we added the ingredients for the cobbler.

We also put tin foil underneath the dutch oven just so we wouldnt get any burn marks on the ground.  When the briquettes were ready we evenly placed 10 underneath the oven around the outside.  If you pile the briquettes in the middle the middle of your food will burn.  So evenly place them around the outside of the oven and you should be good.

Then we did the same thing on the top.  After those were placed we built walls with tin foil just to block the wind.

We then waited an hour and we had cobbler.  I think next time we will cook it just a few minutes less but it was still good.  You can change up this recipe simply by changing the fruit or the cake mix flavor.

Over all I think it was successful.  I can do this on my own now and if we didnt have any power we will be set.  We will have lots of cobbler.  I guess I need to learn how to cook other things now.  :)