If you were stranded on a deserted island with only one cooking vessel, what would
you want it to be?
Nonstick skillet? Three-quart saucepan? Cookie sheet? Tea kettle? Butter warmer?
My answer, in a heartbeat, is a Dutch oven.
Presenting the Dutch oven: A large, cast-iron pot, perhaps 12 inches in diameter
and five inches deep, with an 8-quart capacity, three stubby legs, flat-sided with
a steel bail hooked onto two “ears,” and a flat, flanged lid.
That’s a real Dutch oven, useful when you’re camping in the great outdoors
and you need to cook a hearty stew, soup or chili over an open fire. It’s
also useful at a backyard cookout when you’re feeding a crowd.
But because I don’t camp and don’t have much of a backyard (that’s
good and bad, respectively), I don’t need a real Dutch oven.
That’s why my Dutch oven is stainless steel with ridiculous curves, a flat
bottom (no feet) so I can use it on the stovetop, adorned with Bakelite handles
and a knob on the cover. It’s more than 50 years old and is part of a cookware
set I inherited from my mother. It has burnt-on grease on the sides, and part of
the knob on the cover cracked and fell off years ago.
Is this stainless-steel Dutch oven for sissies? Maybe. Yet I consider it the most
versatile cooking vessel in my kitchen.
I’ve used it for boiling pasta, potatoes and corned beef; browning and braising
pot roast; stewing beef or chicken with vegetables; simmering turkey-stuffed cabbage
and tomato sauce for lasagna; and stirring up soups such as Portuguese bean, turkey
noodle, minestrone, lentil, butternut squash, and pigs’ feet. The Dutch oven
is particularly handy when making stir-fries – its high sides prevent bulky,
raw vegetables from escaping as I stir and fry them with abandon to crisp-tender
perfection. I’ve even recruited the Dutch oven as a mixing bowl when my real
mixing bowl was a little too small.
Dutch? Oven?
The origin of the Dutch oven and its name are unclear. “Dutch” may have
sprung from a Dutch process for casting metal pots in the 18th century or from Dutch
and German traders who brought the pots to America. “Oven” refers to
the versatile pot’s ability to produce baked goods. Set on a bed of coals
with additional coals placed on the lid, the Dutch oven can bake bread, biscuits,
fruit cobblers and more.
Name aside, the Dutch oven endures almost anywhere that people cook. The International
Dutch Oven Society (IDOS), a nonprofit organization based in Utah, boasts chapters
throughout the United States and worldwide. Their goal is to preserve and promote
the art of Dutch oven cooking; they also encourage chapters to help charitable organizations
in their communities. The IDOS’s motto is “Good friends, good food and
good fun,” all of which centers on the nearly indestructible Dutch oven.
The cast-iron ones, not stainless steel.