I have baked delicious one dish meals such as stew and soups in a Dutch Oven that have turned out perfect especially when out in the outdoors. Other meals and snacks that can be made are pizza, rolls, and cakes. Meat is another savory meal that can be cooked to perfection in a Dutch Oven.
There are a few things concerning the cooking source that are important to successful Dutch oven cooking. They can cause the difference between undercooked or burnt food.
To prepare a meat dish such as ribs, chicken or roast, something that helps is brown the meat in the Dutch oven on a camp stove. What happens is the flavor from the browned meat is in the Dutch oven and adds to the taste of the finished product. Also this gets the Dutch oven hot so when it is placed on the coals, they perpetuate the heat and energy so it isn't lost trying to heat the Dutch oven up.
The heat for Dutch oven cooking can't be too hot or too cool. To quote the from the three bears, it must be, "just right." This might seem hard to determine, but if you are using charcoal briquettes it is no harder than counting the number of briquettes to put under and on top of the Dutch oven.
Place as many briquettes under the Dutch oven as its size plus two more than that number on the lid. What this will do is give you a temperature of 350 degrees. For example if you are using a size 12 Dutch oven, put 12 briquettes under the Dutch oven and 14 on the lid. If you are baking anything I recommend using briquettes.
If you decide you would like to use a campfire you will need to burn the wood down to coals and use those coals to heat the Dutch oven. One thing that I like to do is just keep the campfire burning and when I need to replace the coals, which happens about every 30 to 40 minutes, I can do it very easily. You do have to be careful because you don't want to end up with food burned because it is too close to the fire. The best idea is probably to make a place outside the campfire to put your coals.
Traditionally I use a fire pan of some kind, the lid of a garbage can is a good idea, to put the coals in. That makes for easy clean up of the ashes and you don't have coals and ashes separated all over your campsite.
Cooking with wood coals requires some skill learned by experience to figure out the right temperature for the food you are cooking. There are different types of wood that make better coals than others. We usually don't have the choice of having the best wood available every time and just use what we have. So it takes a little more attentiveness to make sure the dish you are preparing gets done the best possible. I don't worry about this too much when cooking meats and stews. This may be more of a concern when baking food items such as cakes and rolls. The correct temperature is more important when baking, so the item doesn't burn or become under cooked. Doughy rolls or soggy cake is a real frustration after all the work you go through to make them.
Another suggestion is use a camp stove and not have a fire or coals at all. This works like a dream with one dish meals and dishes with a lot of moisture in them. A camp stove doesn't do as well for baked food stuffs though because there isn't any heat on the lid.
The best thing to do is just try it find Dutch oven recipe that looks good. They are on the internet or in special Dutch oven cookbooks. Follow the instructions and you will have a great meal that tastes better than anything you have ever cooked before. Especially if you cook it while camping in the mountains.
M.A. Luke is an independent writer for ioVentures, Inc. Go now to dutchovenpro.com to find exciting things to cook with your dutch oven in your backyard fire pit. Also find a large selection of gas camp stoves.