Taking your Dutch oven to the Max part 3
Parts one and two of “Taking your Dutch oven to the Max” brought you cooking with Skewers/Kabobs and Smoking in your Dutch oven. Part three will give you an opportunity to expand your Dutch oven cooking to even greater heights. This technique pushes your cooking arsenal of “One Pot Cooking” to really mean “One Pot Cooking!”
How many times have you gone camping and had to lug so much equipment with just to satisfy all of your styles of cooking? If you think back to you last camping trip, did it include your Dutch ovens, Camp stove, BBQ/Grill, etc? I bet it did! Could you camp for a week without all of that gear?
Could you camp for a week with just one Dutch oven? Yep! Besides ever great Dutch oven recipe in your arsenal, I have showed you how to cook Kabobs and smoke food in your Dutch oven. So that just expanded your arsenal of cooking techniques to make that camping trip enjoyable. But I have a few more “Max” techniques up my sleeve.
Have you ever tried a BBQ recipe that really worked? Probably. I know my Dutch oven ribs are over the top and you might have a few that are as close to good BBQ as you'll ever get out of a cast iron pot. Not traditional BBQ by any stretch of the imagination but close enough for backwoods cooking.
This time you are going to push that old Dutch oven a little bit more and add “Grilling” to your arsenal. Yep, grilling! Same concept as part one where you cooked skewers on your Dutch oven. This time we are adding a grill grate and you will be grilling steaks, chicken, vegetable and fruit and what ever else makes your tummy growl.
No need for me to give you detailed instructions on how to grill but I do have a few pointers:
- Line your Dutch oven with foil.
- Purchase a grate that fits properly on the top of your Dutch oven.You don't want it wobbling.
- Use good charcoal. 100% hardwood will give you the best flavor.
- Single layer your charcoal for cooking.
- Put your grate on right after you place your charcoal in your Dutch oven. This will get it hot enough to leave grill marks.
- Hold your hand over the grate and use the hand count method to tell if its time to grill. 1001, 1002, 1003 go!
- Need more coals, lift up the grate carefully and add more before you need it.
- Add some smoker chips also – maximize that flavor!
Here are some pictures of how I do it!
Give this a try and let me know how it went for you! My steaks were awesome how was yours?
Mouthwatering!! I can’t wait to try it.
Now that is an interesting twist in using a dutch oven that I hadn’t considered, putting coals inside the dutch oven to make a grill. But I do have to agree that a dutch oven is something you can use to cook almost any method, and your idea just supports that even more!