Arkansas Canoe Club Forums

I have not progressed much beyond marshmallows on a stick in terms of camp fire cooking and my bride has expressed interest in dutch ovens. Anybody have any recs on where to start for this cooking gear? Not sure how much we will get into this or where we will take our camp fire cooking, but wanted to get some ideas on the right essentials to get started.

Thanks, -Brad

Brad, get a Lodge 12" standard DO to start with and consider it an investment that you can even cook with at home outside on a hot day to avoid heating up the kitchen. Be sure to invest in a lid-lifter and a lid rest for actual cooking. If nothing else, it will have a decent resale value if you go that road. Chances are you won't! And the Lodge is pre-seasoned if I recall.

Do a search on-line for the many sites that are dedicated to DO cooking and will offer plenty of tips, advice, recipes, etc.

My personal observations:

Accessories: lidlifter, lidrest, leather cooking gloves, chimney, and a good set of tongs for handling individual coals.

Remember that you will be putting glowing coals on a flat surface (ground) and will burn/scorch it. We use aluminum roasting pans to minimize this but it will still scorch the ground surface and it keeps the coals in one place limiting the area. Can do this on an elevated grilling rack using the aluminum to hold the coals.

Use regular charcoal since it affords a more even heating source versus the hardwood type.

Rotate the oven 2-4 times during cooking time to expose the oven to a more even heat source during cooking. Do the whole oven and then rotate the lid while still laying on the oven (try to avoid losing interior heat). For a cobbler, this would mean three rotations of a third each during a 45 minute cooking time. Use your judgement. When it smells like your intent, it's likely done!!

Usually less coals on bottom and more on top. Each recipe can be different depending on heat requirements.

EZ recipe: 1 box yellow cake mix, 2 cans of peaches in syrup, mix of cinammon and brown sugar, and 1 stick of buttah!

Line 12" oven with tin foil or parchment, pour in peaches, and sprinkle cake mix evenly over top. Then dust the sugar/cinammon mix on top lightly. Slice buttah in slices and dot top of mixture.

Cook over 5-7 coals on bottom and 12-15 (or more) on top for 45 minutes with the rotation. When it smells like cobbler, get you some. Not bad with ice cream!!

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Lodge cast iron is no doubt the best cooking dutch ovens I have used.

I use them when car camping.

For rafting trips I have converted to GSI hard anodized aluminum units. Their weight is not near cast irons weight. On the river clean up is easy just wash them down in the normal dish washing buckets. Given attention, they can give close to the same results cast iron does.

Heat control on GSI is a bit more critical than cast iron.

I get good results from my GSI units. But, it takes a while to get to the place where you instinctively know how many coals, how long, how many turns your oven needs to cook a certain dish under windy or cold weather. I have seen people toss ingredients into a Lodge cast iron oven, add a few coals and walk off and still get great results. One thing I learned from my DO mentor Bob Stout is to rotate lid and bottom every 5 - 10 minutes for even baking, so I tend to hang around my ovens during the cook time.

If you want a good crusty cornbread or nicely browned biscuit - cast iron is much easier to work with.
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Roger covers it well in his post, I am just giving some tips if you decide to go river rafting.