Dutch Oven Alternatives?

[Bob_about]

Apart from replacing the plastic handle with a wooden alternative , is there any reason why something like this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LE-CREUSET-CAS...em290243583255

shouldn't make a perfectly serviceable Dutch Oven alternative?

I`m keen to try out recipes and campfire cooking with the family as an alternative / in addition to our current gas options - but until I try I`m not sure how successful I`ll be and forking out the full price for a Dutch Oven to start off is alot to bear if we all agree to stick with the gas on family trips.

I`ve seen similar items for sale in Morrisons for around £15 - the iron does have an enamel coating inside, but would that be a problem?

Obviously I would fashoin some kind of wire based handle over the whole dish to allow lifting on and off a tripod or the coals

Any thoughts or experience appreciated

[scanker]

The proper Le Creuset pots are oven proof, so there wouldn't be a problem with the black handle on the lid. I don't see why it wouldn't be a reasonable alternative. The only negative point would be that hard outside use would chip the enamel I guess.

A proper Dutch Oven will have a lipped lid to enable you to pile coals on the top and heat the oven from top and bottom, which this would lack.

[Huon]

A proper Dutch Oven will have a lipped lid to enable you to pile coals on the top and heat the oven from top and bottom, which this would lack.

You may be able to use the lid upside down to create a bowl to hold coals. I'd need to check this but from memory the knobs on the Le Creuset lids go right through the lid so you may even be able to reverse that as well.

Not as elegant but who cares if the pot is for outdoor use.

Cheers,

Huon

[scanker]

You may be right. I've a feeling there's a screw on the inside.

[Tadpole]

just saw these on evilbay. cast iron stock pots a tad small, for a family but big enough for two
as per, nothing to do with seller.

[mazeman]

Just bite! What makes a Dutch Oven do what it does is not just a matter of iron - it's the legs and the dished lid to hold coals. It's all a matter of heat distribution. Also, don't know whether the inside of a creuset pot is enamelled or not but what gives DO cooking its edge is the pot's individual flavour, its character - and that comes from the iron. If you just want a cookpot for the fire then the creset might do - but if you want to bake bread, biscuits, upside-down cakes and make amazing food, go for a real Dutch Oven.
Just an opinion.
Oh, and my DO works great at home too! Lancashire hotpot.... mmmmmmmm.

[Huon]

Just bite! What makes a Dutch Oven do what it does is not just a matter of iron - it's the legs and the dished lid to hold coals. It's all a matter of heat distribution. Also, don't know whether the inside of a creuset pot is enamelled or not but what gives DO cooking its edge is the pot's individual flavour, its character - and that comes from the iron. If you just want a cookpot for the fire then the creset might do - but if you want to bake bread, biscuits, upside-down cakes and make amazing food, go for a real Dutch Oven.
Just an opinion.
Oh, and my DO works great at home too! Lancashire hotpot.... mmmmmmmm.

Well, I agree to a point. I have several Dutch Ovens and enjoy using them. I also have several Le Creusets that I enjoy using as well. The Le Creusets are also cast iron and, apart from the enamel and the legs, could be Dutch Ovens.

I suspect that the 'character' of the Dutch Oven comes as much from the heat retention and transfer properties of the iron as anything else. I doubt that the enamel changes these properties much. Legs on a Dutch Oven are useful to lift the pot above the coals underneath but I don't think they are essential.

The only reason I don't use the Le Creusets as Dutch Ovens is the cost. They are too expensive to take camping so why not use a cheaper, non-enameled alternative?

Cheers,

Huon

[Bimble]

Bod-about, just about anything can be used for fire cooking.

I think the popularity of Dutch Ovens has little to do with the Dutch more the sickly nostalgia of American campers. I spend a lot of time in Africa, as such I regularly see all strange and wacky ways of cooking meals in what amounts to junk. (Necessity is the mother of invention)

Most people, if they can afford them, use Potjie which are cast iron pots with three long legs (stable), coal lip on the top (for baking evenly), basically a rounder Dutch oven. The dinky little legs on most Dutch ovens just mean that you can’t control the heat well and end up burning your dinner. If you buy a Dutch oven buy one without legs and make a tripod hanger. (The ones without legs will fit in the oven at home to!)

The big advantage that a Potjie has over the Dutch oven is that being nearly a sphere, it is stronger with a given wall thickness ( Iron is brittle), and more importantly its lighter for the same enclosed volume (schoolboy physics). That said both are both heavy as hell, and only good for fixed camps.

Aluminium Dutch ovens are supposed to be good for canoe trips, though I’ve never used one, but you may as well buy old army ammo box and use it as an oven. You can lay it on its side, use an oven thermometer to take all the guess work out of baking and pack all your cooking kit in it when you move on. (You can even nick you wife’s cooling rack to put inside, though you didn’t hear it from me.) All that’s really needed is a canvas bag to stop soot getting on you kit, which you need for a Dutch oven anyway.

Being made of steel ,they doo tend to rust after a few years and need to be replaced, I threw mine away last year, I really should get around to making another, there’s an idea for the how too page?

Best I’ve seen though is to get hold of a 15kg propane tank and an angle grinder (obviously don’t be stupid enough to cut onto it while it’s got even the slightest bit of gas still in it), cut it in half, shorten as required. Scour the inside with sand and a rag till polished the season as for Dutch oven. Voila, oven come Dutch oven/pot. If you cut at an angle you even get a close sealing self centred lid! Had a Christmas turkey cooked in one of these, yummo.

There aren’t a lot of empty gas bottles in Africa........

My mate swears by a big carbon steel wok. He uses it for everything around camp; cooking, washing his smalls, boiling lots of drinking water, doing the washing up, having a shave, etc. He bakes bread by lighting a fire, sticking the dough on a rack, covering it with the upturned wok, then placing coals on top. Works every time for him.

If you want to cook in a creusetes, then crack on, it will work just a well as anything else.

Cooking in something novel makes you intersting around the camp fire, each to their own.

[Native Justice]

The beauty of the Dutch oven is that the seasoned patina inside the thick, energy efficient , cast iron improves the flavor of just about anything cooked in it. The real obsessives who use these devices never really wash them, just wipe them out with a wrag or paper towel. In addition, those "little legs" allow you to spread charcoal below the oven in addition to those charcoal retained by the lid lip for a terrific convection like effect. I have several and these two features allow you to stack several Dutch ovens, one atop the other, using the charcoal on the lid of the one below it to help cook the ones above reducing the total amount of charcoal fuel needed to cook a full meal. Totally amazing technology. I much prefer these to the "camp oven" which are the pots with out the lid lip and bottom feet mostly intended for hanging over the fire or sliding in the home range oven. I believe the thickness of the steel is thinner (seems to be the case on the single one I have) than that of the Dutch's but you can judge that for yourself. For pure utility, you just can't beat cast iron.

NJ

[tombear]

I'm still having no problems with my Aussie camp oven

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24367

except for buying various non stick tins and trays to fit inside, which seems to be a compulsion with me.

OK, making your own is the best option but if you not so inclined I can heartily recommend these from Oz which are made for rough bush usage and the deep lip on the lid really keeps the ash on in a wind.

I still need to make a canvas case for it of course and rig a specific tool for shovelling coals about. I've half a mind just to fit a longer handle to one of those domestic fire ash shovels or get one of those fixed head entrenching tools (like the Huns used in both world wars) so I can use it for digging as well. The E tools I've tried all come to a point and have rather short handles, but I digress.

ATB

Tom

[Bimble]

tombear, thanks for the link. Those aussies know a thing or two about cooking over a fire. Given that I've never used one, I would say from looking at the website they are a whole lot more 'practical' in the field than a dutch oven or potjie. If you could have got them in the UK, and I'd have known about them, then I certainly wouldn't have bothered hoiking my potjie back from africa in my luggage 13 years ago........I was much stronger and a whole lot more stupid back then.

[Celt_Ginger]

As I sit here reading this, I'm looking at my Zebra billy can and thinking that the little bowl that sits just inside the lid would do exactly the same job as the lid on the Aussie bush oven. All I need to do is make a trivet out of something like a pot stand from woolworths and hopefully it will work.

[tombear]

A damn good idea that! I'm not sure if the steels thick enough perform as well as the Metal Spinners jobs but that useless (so far to me) pan you get with a Zebra would hold coals if say you were roasting a small piece of meat You'd just need a trivet of some sort, easy enough to knock up. I wonder if bolting a slab of steel to the base and bottom of the pan would improve the baking/roasting?

I really wish some one imported them to the UK as I really fancy the beeeeg version as mine can only really take a 8 inch tin inside. I may have to see if I can bribe my mate in Adelaide to source me one at some point. No point trying to get one in time for using this year as sea mail is agonisingly slow.

Tom

[ilan]

might be worth googleing nisbets catering equipment they do some cheap and large cast iron pots as well as black iron pans