How To Use Your Dutch Oven for the Very First Time

in the event that the power goes out and you need a way to cook do you know what one piece of kit that every pantry needs to have in it i'm guessing some of you might not even know if there was only one thing that's going to replace that pot that microwave the oven the stove top everything in one piece well stick around because in the next few minutes i'm going to tell you how to use a dutch oven which is going to be your very best friend in the event of a power outage go get it out of the closet bring it out dust that thing off and meet me around the corner [Music] before we get started i want you to already know on the front end we're not making anything from scratch today the purpose of this episode is to show you how to use a dutch oven if you've never used it before or just haven't done it enough that you can remember how to do it very well it's pretty important you wouldn't get into a maserati and think you were going to go anywhere if you didn't know where the ignition was and it's the same way with that dutch oven a little bit different technology but you need to know how to use it before a crisis comes when you're forced to use it and you're clueless in that event what's going on so here's just the 101 primer and for this to get started i want to encourage you go ahead and make this as easy on yourself as you possibly can all right what i'm saying is i want you to because on the dutch oven it's important for you to be able to regulate the heat i don't want you to just take it out and camp over a campfire the very first time it's very difficult to know how much heat you've got on top or on bottom or around it in that situation so we're going to start with charcoal briquettes the reason why we do that is partly because you can play with them and learn exactly how to place the heat and how much you need and where it goes on top or on the bottom and sides and you can kind of gauge by the number of charcoal briquettes that you use just how much the temperature is going to be in the oven itself it's pretty good little system so get yourself some charcoal briquettes and i'm going to encourage you get the ones that light automatically should say instant light right on the front of the package i want you to get the kind that are regular not um special mesquite or any kind of hardwood um partly because we're doing a dutch oven which is enclosed it doesn't need to have special smells and tastes that are infused into it through specialty briquettes and also i would say the hardwood briquettes like mesquite or such are going to burn at different temperatures and so we just want to learn on the very basic just just the 101 version today so regular briquettes instant light get yourself a regular lighter that isn't fancy i don't want you to try and use a ferro rod or that bow drill to to light the fire on this one and i want you to get something that's probably pre-made that's very simple for you to light today i'm going to be using these little tumbleweeds and they are all natural fire starters and it's going to actually be like a little nest that's pre-made pre-infused with goodness that's going to help burn for about 12 minutes so you're going to have time for all of those briquettes to gain that fire that's gonna go burn down through them okay these are just things that make it easier for you now we're going to use a pre-made pie that's right i want you to know how to bake a pie partly because a pie is perfectly round it fills up almost the right amount of space inside so that you're going to be able to learn just where the heat needs to be to get this perfectly cooked also i don't want you to ruin something that's homemade by putting a whole lot of effort into it and then ruining something on your first try out of the shoot so a pie from the store is gonna cost you maybe about four or five dollars and it's an easy one that's probably gonna taste good even if it's burnt a little bit but it's also going to not be a huge mistake if you end up messing it all up and not being able to use it at all for our purposes today we're just going to lay out tin foil on a very flat surface that can handle heat you can see i'm here on cement which is perfect for this if you find yourself in an urban environment that's probably what you have to work with but if you don't have a cement patio go out into the gravel we could have even done this out in the grass or along a creek bank as long as you have a flat enough surface perhaps with some flat uh stones that you can prop this on but it does need to be set up above the ground so you don't want it sinking into the grass let me talk you through just for a minute the number of charcoal briquettes that we're using i always want to use more than enough because when you are using just the right number you're going to find something goes wrong remember two is one and one is none well always light more than you need because you can always scoot some over if you don't need all of the briquettes but for our purposes today we need about just approximately 30 briquettes you're going to just build a pyramid with these charcoal briquettes and as we get near the top we're kind of making a little nest of sorts in the middle so that we can jam that fire starter right down into the middle and if possible of course it would be nice if we could put a few brickheadz right on top of it but as we light that it's going to ignite all of those briquettes slowly and pull that heat and that fire all the way down to the bottom of the stack and we're going to get this really well lit and then just let it go for about 15 minutes you'd never want to cook over an open fire where it's just the flames because surprisingly those are cooler most of the time if it's that nice golden flame those are cooler than the charcoal briquettes once they have burned down into that kind of gray ashy stage which is what we want them to go down to before we even start cooking on it after about 15 minutes of that we're going to spread these out and what you want when you're baking when you are baking we want all the heat around the outside perimeter we don't want any right in the middle of the bottom we're going to want most of the heat on top like i said so boy that is a lot of heat i'm going to get my gloves on here so that my hands are protected from the heat and before i go any further on this let me just pop you over here to see this so this is a 12 inch dutch oven and the one thing you always have to remember is you have to have whatever you put inside lift it up off the bottom so this little trivet that we've put in here is going to be invaluable at keeping this from burning that's a an important secret that you cannot do without so i put that right in the middle and i've got my pie prepared again this is the one that was just whoops frozen and to make it special of course i had to put a little bit of egg white over the top of it and some milk egg wash and then a little sprinkle of sugar so that our sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar so that it feels a little bit more homemade also i've chosen a slightly petite sized pie so there's at least an inch all the way around the outside before it gets to the edge of this the heat is going to radiate but i don't want it up next to the edge and then i just put on the lid okay to make this easy i'm going to go ahead and put the coals on top of this before i set the coals around the base of it people who like to get fancy with this can you can make your little design so that it's this perfect balance of everything usually i just stuff it up here until i've got about 20 coals on top [Music] also you can preheat your dutch oven that's going to be very beneficial to you if you if i would have put that in the heat first so that the the actual time would be shortened once we get the pie inside that would have helped a lot i didn't do that this time but there i've got my coals that are going to be around the edges looks good to me and i'm going to go ahead and set this right there nestled on top of those all right now if i had preheated this i can promise you that it would have gone closer to more like oh 30 to 40 minutes this is gonna take up to an hour just so you know the way i've got it because this wasn't preheated and that's okay you can do it either way but i will put probably a couple of uh extra briquettes here and there on this and that's going to help um just they will slowly light slowly turn hot themselves they will not be the same temperature as the others but like i said i've got approximately 20 on top 10 on the bottom in a ring some people get really scientific they'll place the charcoal briquettes in an exactly symmetric type way so that the heat is always perfectly distributed some people say that if you let the charcoal briquettes touch each other then you'll get hot spots on the top of whatever you're trying to cook inside i haven't really experienced that as long as it's relatively spread out and even and not clumped up in one area and missing in another you should be just fine now remember this if i was going to broil something think this through with me if i was going to broil in this obviously you want all the heat on top so you just put every single brickhead on top if i was going to only fry like if i wanted to do bacon or eggs or pancakes or something in the bottom i only need heat on the bottom so you tuck every one of those briquettes under the bottom and have nothing on top those are two easy rules that way but anytime you're baking breads pies pizzas anything else you would put inside to bake i want you to try and remember that rule of two thirds on top one third on the bottom now some folks will have a slightly different ratio everybody has their own version and i will say it varies greatly depending on the weather the humidity how much the wind is blowing how cold it is outside versus how hot it is you're going to have to take all those into account so it may not be exactly as i say when you do your version of this if you're in the middle of winter it's not going to be the same as me doing it in the spring in tennessee but adjust accordingly and play around with it until you get it just right for what you're working with and now you're going to wait and you have to be patient promise that you remember to not keep checking it because every time you lift the lid off you're going to notice a huge amount of that heat escapes and you need every bit of it conserved for this it will go faster and more reliably now i do want you to come out and every 15 minutes that you're cooking anything that you're cooking over in a dutch oven i want you to turn the whole thing you can do a quarter of a turn every 15 minutes is kind of how i remember it i'll turn the base of it about 15 about a quarter of a turn uh every 15 minutes and i'll turn the the lid of it about a quarter of a turn the opposite direction every 15 minutes there's no perfect science to that what you're just trying to do is if there is any amount of heat that is really hitting one spot hard kind of just distributes it and evens it all out over the course of the time all right it's been about an hour and 20 minutes maybe a little bit longer and the coals have all started to cool down quite a bit but oh does that smell good look at that it's beautiful now let me tell you how i cheated just a smidgen so you know what to do in a dutch oven it might be a little bit difficult to get that perfect golden top on and if you are worried about that you can do what i did which is what grandma would have done and i took and whisked up just a one egg and about a tablespoon of milk a splash of milk and i put that all over the top kind of like a little egg wash before i put the pie in and sprinkled it with some cinnamon and sugar and that always gives it this nice home-baked goldeny look and it smells incredible but let's get this out of here if i can without dropping it look at that i think it's time for a taste test don't you i have been waiting for this moment for the last several hours and i finally get to taste test this wonderful looking pie it did cook perfectly i don't see anything about it that i can complain about nothing is burned my mouth is watering just trying to wait for my first bite i want to encourage you if you have not purchased a dutch oven yet go on over to prepstetters.com because i'm going to have a link over there that just has a little bit more information that's going to help you know what size you might want to buy for your family of course i recommend a good quality brand or even an old antique version that you might get at an antique store but get yourself a dutch oven it is a worthy investment and you're going to be thanking yourself and using it the whole rest of your life all right it's time for me to enjoy my pie i hope you take the time to share this with somebody that you love and join us again next week until then though will you take a moment and go out and find somebody to be a blessing to today i'll see you next time god bless you [Music] in the holy bible this is out of first peter chapter 5 verses 10 and 11 it says this and after you have suffered a little while the god of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in christ will himself restore and confirm and strengthen and establish you to him be the dominion for ever and ever amen now go spread the word [Music] you

Channel: PREPSTEADERS

Views: 23,128

Rating: 4.9567475 out of 5

Keywords: Survival, Homesteading, Prepping, Preppers, prepsteaders, wisdom creek, Lodge, Made in USA, Dutch oven, dutch oven, outdoor cooking, baking, how to, food, campfire, cast iron, camping cooking, slow cooker, cast iron cooking, camp cooking, dutch oven recipes, lodge cast iron, camping recipes, best dutch oven, dutch oven cooking, cooking with cast iron, dutch oven recipe, cooking techniques, dutch ovens

Id: tIslB7wR6ik

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021