One Pot Meals: 50 Simple and Easy Dutch Oven Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What does one cook in a Dutch oven? ›

No matter the style or size, any Dutch oven will open up endless recipe opportunities. Create beautifully braised meat, pot roasts, hearty beef stew, healing chicken soup, or the creamiest mac and cheese. Use it like a slow cooker, a bread cloche, or a pot for frying.

Dutch ovens feature a larger volume than most other cooking pots, other than the largest stock pots. That increased volume allows them to serve various purposes, from cooking large batches of soup or stew to holding entire roasts. A 4-qt Dutch oven is ideal for making dinner for the entire family.

Be Mindful When Cooking Acidic Foods

In an enamel-coated Dutch oven, prolonged cooking with acidic ingredients may discolor the interior coating but doesn't erode it.

When you buy from Le Creuset, you're paying for high-quality pots and pans that are designed to stand the test of time. Rather than aluminum or stainless steel, Le Creuset craft their pieces from cast iron, which has a much higher heat capacity.

Why Are Dutch Ovens So Expensive? A cast iron Dutch oven is a hefty piece of equipment, and all that iron comes at a cost: a lot of material goes into constructing this multi-purpose pot.

Cooking Applications

A Dutch oven is your ticket for braises, since its cast iron core retains and evenly distributes heat. It can also easily go from the oven to the stove. A stock pot can go in the oven, but its typically tall sides may make that a potentially awkward fit, so it's better left on the stove top.

A Dutch oven is a heavy, wide, fairly shallow pot with a tight-fitting lid. We tend to think of enameled cast iron casseroles with two small handles and a lid as the only pot that qualifies as a Dutch oven, but that isn't the case.

Sticking. The Cause: Occasionally food may stick to your cast iron cookware. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as not using enough fat or oil when cooking, using cookware that isn't well seasoned, or when breaking in new cookware that hasn't built up additional layers of seasoning.

Why does my Dutch oven burn everything? ›

If it's too hot, the pot can scorch or the food can burn and stick to the surface. Cooking at medium heat is what works best with this pot. I would recommend cooking on medium or low heat, even if you're frying or searing meat.

One downside to enameled cast iron is that it's not the easiest material for novices to work with. Compared to other pots and pans, Le Creuset's take a long time to get hot, and since they retain heat so well, it's easy to burn things once they do. “It's a beast if you don't use it properly,” Anastasio says.

While some Le Creuset products are made in China, the company's enameled cast iron products are still made in its original foundry in France. Le Creuset's stainless steel and nonstick cookware is most often made in Portugal.

It holds the heat evenly, and the enamel makes it great for easy cleanup.” He went on to say that at his restaurant, chefs use the brand's pans, and all of the sauces are made in Le Creuset sauce pots.

Dutch ovens are great for stews, sauces, soups, braises or any other moist-heat cooking method. This pot can cook a casserole or a whole chicken. You can brown meat and vegetables on the stove and let them simmer away or transfer your pot to the oven to finish cooking there.

What makes Dutch ovens (also sometimes called French ovens) so enduring is their versatility. The sturdy build helps store and maintain heat, the heavy lid traps condensation and allows for more efficient heating, and the single-piece construction means Dutch ovens move easily between the cooktop and the oven.

Definitely. You can do just about anything in a dutch oven, from a roast chicken to soups to baked beans to desserts. One thing it's good for is baking bread in your home oven.

These pots are ovenproof, so you can start cooking your meal on the stovetop and move it straight to the oven to finish. And because they're so attractive, some cooks move the pot right to the table—on a trivet, of course—to serve. In CR's Dutch oven tests, we braise brisket, simmer sauces, and bake loaves of bread.