Our Testing of Dutch Ovens

in france they call it uncoco and in south africa it's known as apocha but here in the u.s we call it a dutch oven and i wouldn't want to cook in a kitchen without one so luckily i've got adam here he's going to show us which one won our testing these are true kitchen workhorses bridges they are all right we have 11 dutch ovens here that were all about six to eight quarts and the price range was a low of 54.31 to a high of so it's 367.99 a spread yes most of these pots were enameled cast iron we love the heat retention qualities of cast iron for a dutch oven two of them were outliers that one down at the very end is just plain cast iron no enamel coating and this one right here is ceramic the ceramic one is significantly lighter and you know if that was a viable alternative we were definitely interested in sure sure so let me tell you about the tests okay the cooking tests included searing meatballs and then simmering them in tomato sauce braising beef burgundy frying french fries and baking almost no need bread and the pots were evaluated on the quality of the food and how easy these pots were to use and to clean so let's talk about some design factors that affected ease of use okay the first one is the cooking surface and that relates to the shape of the pot and that relates to the sides of the pot okay you want the largest cooking surface that you can get because that means fewer batches when you're say browning meatballs or meat for stew something like that this one has sides that kind of curve in yeah towards the bottom that takes away some of your cooking surface so this one had a fairly small cooking surface at eight inches whereas the sides of this one don't curve in they're pretty straight that left more cooking surface nine and three quarter inches okay we also paid attention to the interior finish this one is dark and that actually made it a little harder for testers to judge what's going on with the fond when they were searing meat or meatballs it also made it hard to see the tip of a remote thermometer when they had it in there when they were frying french fries much easier to work with a lighter colored interior weight was another important factor like i mentioned cast iron dutch ovens are almost always heavy and the range in this lineup was just over 18 pounds that's this guy to nine and three quarter pounds and why don't you do a little weightlifting for me bridgette try that one so this is empty and this is really heavy i mean imagine this full of hot fat or a big cassoulet something else exactly and how much does this weigh again nine and three quarters all right oh yeah no totally i could be carrying my kids around in that yeah so it's a point in favor of the ceramics another important design feature was the handles because you know if you're lifting a stew or your cassoulet out of the oven it's hot it's heavy you want something to grip on to and testers really prefer big open looped beefy handles like this one give those a try nice and secure yeah and compared to little tiny tab handles like that one lift that one up yeah i mean you have to use your fingertips oh that's heavy too you have to use your fingertips and i can't even imagine if it was hot and i had big pot holders exactly oven mitts or potholders do not make that any easier these should be pots for the long haul i actually have friends who are using their grandmother's hand-me-down dutch ovens exactly and so we wanted to get a sense of their durability and that meant abuse testing the testers performed three abuse tests scrubbing the pots clean ten times with an abrasive sponge whacking the rim 50 times with a metal spoon and slamming the lid onto the base 25 times now all but two of these survived unscathed they're pretty strong this was unfortunately the downfall of our lightweight ceramic here it is check it out yeah fissure there it's only going to get bigger with more use and that was just putting it down from a two inch height wow so that pretty much kills it it's too fragile to be sure oh serious workhorse kitchen pot one of the other pots got a little chip in the enamel but it really didn't affect its functionality at all so in the end we had our winner which was no surprise this is the la cruz a seven and a quarter court round dutch oven we've loved it in the past we still love it it's 367.99 the price will make you gasp but it's 13.7 pounds so it's a nice manageable weight it's got a light interior it's really durable it's just it's a great pot if you don't want to spend that much money and a lot of people don't there is a best buy this is the cuisinart chef's classic enameled cast iron covered casserole this is the one that got a little tiny chip in it from the abuse testing but again it didn't affect the functionality it's a little bit heavier than our winter but it's got the big wide cooking surface it's got the easy to see light interior and this one was only 83.70 that's a big difference yeah well there you go if you want a dutch oven for the long run look no further than the lake crusade round dutch oven it's 367 and 99 cents there you go thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 466,480

Keywords: dutch oven, braising, cooks illustrated, americas test kitchen, kitchen equipment, equipment reviews

Id: LuY8EjdeQLo

Length: 5min 29sec (329 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020