if you are trying to bake something, then being able to apply heat from the top is a must.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAdditionally, many dutch ovens have reversible lids that will allow you to griddle your food on the underside of your lid. Cool!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legs or No Legs for Camping Dutch Ovens?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What’s with those legs on a dutch oven? Won’t those get in the way? Well, yes and no. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For using your dutch oven in your oven at home, legs can be a pain. You’ll have to set your dutch oven in such a way that the legs will go through the grates in your oven. Furthermore, storing a dutch oven with legs is more cumbersome than storing a dutch oven with a flat bottom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So do you need legs on a dutch oven for camping, though? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nYou can live without them, but legs offer you some flexibility in the way you cook. If you don’t have legs on your dutch oven, then you will rely on cooking grates, tripods, or swings <\/strong>to suspend your dutch oven over a heat source. While you <\/strong>can<\/em> put a flat dutch oven directly on coals, you may be asking for some nasty hot spots which can cause your food to burn. Furthermore, your dutch oven won’t sit levelly if you are resting it directly on coals.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWith legs, you can put coals directly under your cast iron dutch oven and cook away from the rest of your cook fire. The legs give a little bit of distance, and ensure a more level surface while cooking. It’s a trade-off, but in general, you want a camping dutch oven with legs<\/strong> for the flexibility of being able to cook in multiple ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\nSeasoning: To Season or Not to Season<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Every cast iron dutch oven you will buy comes with a different level of pre-seasoning. Many cast iron aficionados choose to strip the pre-seasoning off their cast iron cookware immediately upon purchasing and will go through their own seasoning process. Others say it’s best to just use the default seasoning until it starts to deteriorate before going through the involved seasoning process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Depending on the manufacturer’s seasoning process, you may find yourself dissatisfied with the level of seasoning on your cast iron cookware. Whether you choose to re-season a new cast iron dutch oven is up to you, but it can help to know what others decide to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other options to seasoning are to choose an aluminum camping dutch oven <\/strong>that doesn’t require any seasoning at all. Or, to use disposable dutch oven liners<\/strong> intended to cook your food for one meal, but prevent contact with the walls of the dutch oven, meaning that your food won’t affect the pre-seasoning, and you can get away with not needing to worry about seasoning as much as you would otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\nActually, it might be a good idea to use a liner if you’re going to be cooking acidic foods in general, since they can damage the seasoning of your cast iron dutch oven, whether you choose to use liners on a regular basis or not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dutch ovens (even if they haven’t been called dutch ovens) have been around for well over a hundred years, but that doesn’t mean that different manufacturers don’t try new things to try and make dutch ovens more useful and versatile. Let’s dive into a few useful <\/strong>features <\/p>\n\n\n\nLegs on the Lid: A Cast Iron Griddle in Disguise!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Let’s face it, dutch ovens are bulky. They’re not ideal for pan-frying an egg or a steak, because it’s just more difficult to cook food in a pot that needs to be cooked in a pan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then comes the problem of needing to bring multiple pieces of cookware and the inevitable question: do I really have to bring my entire kitchen when I go camping?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFortunately, some strides have been made here. Some dutch ovens actually feature legs on the top of the dutch oven lid<\/strong>. These lids have dual purposes and are actually reversible. You can flip the lid and rest it on the legs, and then use the bottom side of the lid as a griddle. Therefore, you can just bring your dutch oven and you have two pieces of cookware to fulfill almost all of your cooking needs! Pretty snazzy. Does anyone say snazzy, anymore?<\/p>\n\n\n\nSome manufacturers, such as Overmont, actually make the lid with a little depth, with legs on the top making this a portable standing skillet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
5-in-One Cook-it-All<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Lodge makes what they call a “Cook It All”<\/a> (see Price on Amazon), which is a 14-inch but shallow dutch oven that has multiple uses. The lid is reversible with a griddle on one side and a grill on the other, while the pot itself is wide and shallow, making it ideal for a stir fry (like a wok). With the lid on the bottom with the pot inverted, you can use it for baking, closer to a dutch oven. This is actually pretty tempting for me since it’d be nice to just have one piece of cookware to go camping. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You’ve decided to take the plunge into the age-old tradition of cooking in a dutch oven while you’re camping. Some people are able to make amazing meals in their dutch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":24,"label":"Camping"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/cast-iron-dutch-oven-resized-1024x683.jpg",640,427,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Peter","author_link":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/author\/outsidedecider\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":24,"name":"Camping","slug":"camping","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":24,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":132,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":24,"category_count":132,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Camping","category_nicename":"camping","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7853,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/7853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decideoutside.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}