Dutch Ovens for the Camp Kitchen

Joe Duke likes cast iron cookware because it easily adapts to almost any recipe. "You can cook just about anything ... in a Dutch oven," says Duke, a Dutch oven cook from Cypress, Texas. "You can fry, bake breads and desserts, make soups, stews, and roasts and cook just about any thing you wish." Duke even finds that low-fat recipes work equally well in Dutch ovens.

Duke is right. According to Mark Miles, proprietor and chef of Chuckwagon Supply and Catering, the popularity of Dutch oven cooking is on the rise. With that in recent decades several new Dutch oven styles have been developed.

But the choices on the market can confuse the best Dutch oven cook. Do you buy cast iron or aluminum? Is the shallow bread oven best for you? Or does the deeper meat oven fit your needs? And then there's the newer hi-tech Ultimate Dutch Oven and large cauldron-like MACA ovens.

Conventional Dutch ovens

Ramon F. Adams described the Dutch oven as a "very large, deep, thick iron skillet with three legs under the bottom and a heavy lid with upturned lip fitting the top" in 1952. It hasn't changed much since cowboy cooks and pioneers cooked basic meals in them during the westward expansion of the Nineteenth Century.

For most Dutch oven cooks, the conventional Dutch oven is easily found. All of the online suppliers and many local outdoor and camping stores carry them. The Lodge Dutch oven is the most popular. But other companies, like Larsen Dutch Oven and Texsport, for instance, manufacture the traditional Dutch oven and are found on the Internet and in local stores.

Lodge Dutch ovens are manufactured in sizes ranging from the diminutive five-inch to the broad 16-inch oven. The eight-, 10- and 12-inch ovens are ideal for families. And for those camp cooks who attract large crowds, the 14- and 16-inch ovens will handle their needs.

Lodge also sells two deeper ovens, commonly called meat ovens because you can cook larger roasts, whole chickens and smaller turkeys in them. I use my shallow ovens, which are called bread ovens, for baking buttermilk biscuits and sourdough bread. Chicken enchiladas and lasagna also fit nicely into my bread ovens. My meat ovens are ideal for roasted chicken, corned beef brisket and prime rib. The deeper ovens are also great cooking large vats of stew and chili.

Aluminum Dutch ovens

Cast aluminum Dutch ovens are ideal for camp kitchens where cast iron ovens are just too heavy. Horse packers, river rafters and airplane campers find that the aluminum Dutch oven is an acceptable substitute for cast iron. And aluminum ovens benefit camp cooks who don't have the upper body strength to lift a cast iron Dutch oven that's full of food, which can weigh as much as three times the weight of an aluminum oven.

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