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Easy Dutch Oven Recipes and Camping Recipes
Here at All Season Tents, we want to help you enjoy all of your outdoor adventures with our Dutch oven recipes. We are constantly adding new cam  ping recipes to our collection to help you have some tasty cooking in the great outdoors. To help out those who may be new to Dutch oven cooking, we have put together a list of basic Dutch oven cooking tips along with a temperature chart.
The most important thing to understand about cooking our Dutch oven recipes is that cooking with Dutch ovens is definitely an art, not a science. The biggest difference you will find between cooking in your kitchen and cooking our camping recipes in the great outdoors is Temperature Control! Here are some tips to help you maintain good temperature control of your Dutch oven recipes and be on your way to amazing your friends and family with the best tasting food ever! Keep in mind that once you understand how to maintain good temperature control, you can cook pretty much anything in your Dutch oven!
Dutch Oven Cooking Tips
- Charcoal works better to heat your Dutch oven and maintain good temperature control than the coals from the fire. The coals from the fire burn out too quickly and charcoal is easier to keep an easy steady heat.
- You will need twice as many charcoals on top as you need beneath your Dutch oven.
- Charcoal only burns on the surface where it can get air. This means that a freshly lit briquette has maybe 4 square inches of surface area, but when you burn it for 30 minutes it can easily be down to 2 square inches decreasing the total heat produced.
- When lighting your charcoal, instead of lighting one big pile and transferring your hot briquettes, try making a small pile that you will use for heating the bottom of the Dutch oven and place the rest of the charcoal on top of the lid before you light them. It just makes everything easier.
- Be mindful of the wind! The wind affects your cooking in 2 ways. First, it blows the heat away from the Dutch oven and causes uneven heating. Second, it causes the charcoal to burn faster meaning less heating time.
- To avoid hot spots, try rotating the the Dutch oven and the lid about every 10 minutes. Rotate the lid and Dutch oven opposite directions, so the lid a quarter turn to the right and the oven a quarter turn to the left. ***Don't dump ash into the food as you rotate the lid***
- Don't wait too long to use the charcoal! Beginners usually leave the charcoal too long after starting it before they use it. It should only take 10 to 15 minutes to start the charcoal. If it burns too long before use, it will be half burned away and will not produce as much heat.
- Always start more charcoal than you need just in case you need some extra later to maintain heat if necessary and especially if it is windy.
In the chart below, the top number is the total number of briquets that are required and the numbers below are the number of top/bottom briquets that you will need to get the temperature on the top of the chart.
Dutch Oven Temperature Chart
| OVEN |
325°F |
350°F |
375°F |
400°F |
425°F |
450°F |
| 8" |
15
10/5
|
16
11/5
|
17
11/6
|
18
12/6
|
19
13/6
|
20
14/6
|
| 10" |
19
13/6
|
21
14/7
|
23
16/7
|
25
17/8
|
27
18/9
|
29
19/10
|
| 12" |
23
16/7
|
25
17/8
|
27
18/9
|
29
19/10
|
31
21/10
|
33
22/11
|
| 14" |
30
22/12
|
32
24/12
|
34
22/12
|
36
24/12
|
38
25/13
|
40
26/14
|
| 16" |
34
22/12
|
36
24/12
|
38
25/13
|
40
27/13
|
42
28/14
|
44
30/14
|
We love new camping recipes or Dutch oven recipes! If you have yummy Dutch oven recipes or other camping recipes you can't live without, please share them with us.
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