Tag Archives: dutch oven

dutch ovens with coals

How to manage heat in a Dutch Oven

Chuck Wagon Cooking, , , ,

It’s time to talk about the elephant in the living room. By that I mean, we wish to answer the question that everyone is afraid to ask…

How do you know what the temperature is inside a Dutch oven?

The old song is “two over, over…and two under, under.” However that works fine if you were using charcoal briquettes. What if you’re using Oak, or Mesquite, or if there’s a 20 mile an hour wind blowing or it’s 30° outside. Also, what about when you need to get the temperature up to 400° to bake bread?

Well folks, the answer is: “it depends.” Mostly, you fly by the seat of your pants. You try one thing or something else. You burn a lot of wood and you feed a lot of biscuits to the cow dogs. Just remember, you need more coals on the lid, and fewer underneath – unless you like black bottom biscuits!

Hint: a 12 inch oven with six briquettes underneath and 18 on the lid gives a pretty reliable 350°.

Love and Haight

Chuck Wagon Cooking, , , ,

My all time favorite chuck wagon cook/teacher is Stella Hughes, who in turn idolized a Texas cowboy turned-Arizona-camp-cook for the famous Hash Knife outfit in Winslow: Clair Haight.  His big specialty was son-of-a-gun stew, but since organ meat is not so popular nowadays, I decided to share his other specialty, peach cobbler, for which generations of Arizona cowboys remember him.  This is a great Valentine dish.

Put your twelve inch dutch oven on a bed of coals and drop in a stick of butter.  Open a gallon can of quartered peaches, pour off the liquid and chop up the peaches a little more, then dump them into the sizzling butter.  Then dump in a smaller can of cherry pie filling and stir.  When the fruit starts to bubble, take the oven off the fire and stir in a heaping tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in cold water.  Add sugar and cinnamon, nine drops of almond extract and a jigger of Uncle Ezra (Ezra Brooks bourbon whiskey).  Then make a pie crust (Aunt Betty’s recipe) and lay it on top of the fruit.  Cut vents in the crust to let out the steam, your brand, or stars, or tree limbs like mom did.  Then put on the lid and pile on a shovel full of live coals.  Rotate the lid a quarter turn every few minutes.  Check it in about 20-30 minutes.  When the crust is baked, the cobbler’s done!  

Happy Valentines!