Absolutely Amazing Dutch Oven Burgers

Yesterday, I was browsin’ the webs when I came across this recipe for black bean burgers. I was intrigued, because, even though I’m not usually interested when a vegetable pretends to be meat, this recipe actually looked pretty good. I’ll probably try it sometime soon.

However.

Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to do it with meat, anyway, because, really, it looked amazing.

I had decided that it would be an excellent chance for me to practice grilling under my wonderful new gazebo, but after prepping all the meat and the fixin’s, I discovered that someone had forgotten to close the valve on the propane cylinder last time, and we were outa gas. Seriously, I don’t know who could have done such a thing. I find it unconscionable and almost unforgivable. But, we must move on.

At that point, I decided to go ahead and cook them Dutch oven style, and fired up some coals anyway.

Dutch Oven Burgers

12” Shallow Dutch oven
22+ coals underneath

The lid of a 12” Dutch oven
22+ coals underneath

The burger meat:

2+ lbs of ground beef
1 onion (grated)
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
salt
pepper
cumin
chili powder
paprika
a handful of fresh parsley

Kaiser rolls
butter

Sliced cheese (I used sharp cheddar)

Toppings (all optional)
Lettuce
tomatoes
onions
pickles
cooked bacon
mayo
ketchup
mustard

The first step was to mix up the meat. This was quite simple, I mixed the ingredients in the first block all together. I actually chose the spices based on my own whims, rather than on the recipe I found. Each one was about a teaspoon, except for the chili powder, which was only a few sprinkles. My homemade chili powder is actually pretty strong. You can adjust yours to your own powders and tastes.

I also sliced the topping onions, the tomatoes, and the cheese

I put the Dutch oven on the coals and let it pre-heat for quite a while. I really wanted it to be pretty hot at first. I made my patties fairly large, partly because I knew they’d have to fit on a kaiser roll, and also because I knew that they’d shrink. By the way, I chose the kaiser rolls because they are a bit firmer than typical store-bought hamburger buns. Those things are pathetic. I also made larger patties ‘cause I’m a guy and I like to have lots of meat on my burgers. I know it’s not healthy, but once in a while ya just gotta live large.

I put the patties in the Dutch oven, and used it essentially as a griddle. Because it was so hot to start with, it got a pretty good sear on the first side.

While the first round of patties were cooking, I got more coals under an inverted Dutch oven lid (on a trivet-stand) and let that heat up. After turning the burgers, I brushed butter on the inside of the kaiser rolls and put them on the heated lid to toast, butter side down. After the meat turns once, and cooks a bit, it’s also a good time to put on the cheese so it can melt yummily.

I was careful not to overcook the burgers. I did cook them all the way through, but not dry. It’s tricky to get to that, I think. But, it worked last night. I think the Dutch oven is not as hot as most gas grills, which helped me to not dry them out. I also think it’s very important for burgers to be topped and served the instant they come off the heat. The longer you wait, the drier and crustier they get. Not good. If you’re serving family, have them gather and pray not too long after you do the first flip or they’ll be too late.

Finally, I pulled the buns off the lid/griddle, put the burger, sizzling, onto the bun, and let the family top it as they pleased. For my money, I love lots of extra stuff on my burgers, so I tend to layer it pretty high. Others might not. That’s OK. Even with the additional flavors, the spices and the flavor of the meat came through. It was possibly the best burgers I’ve ever made.



Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Dutch Oven Deconstructed Hamburger Salad

This Dutch oven recipe is included in my Dutch oven cookbook, "Around the World in a Dutch Oven"

Wow.  I’ve been sooo busy.  I just realized that it’s been two and a half weeks since I first posed this challenge: to deconstruct the basic, traditional American hamburger.

I need to start paying more attention to myself when I make these challenges.  I struggled with this one as well.  How to use all of those basic ingredients, and make it fresh and new.  Here they are:

• Ground beef
• Ketchup
• Mustard
• Cheddar (or plastic) cheese
• Onions
• Pickles
• lettuce
• Mayonnaise
• And, of course, the bun

I bounced a number of ideas around in my head, and struggled with all of them.  On the way, I realized that there is one type of dish that is significantly underrepresented here at the Black Pot: The salad.

There’s a reason for that.  You usually don’t cook salads, and Dutch ovens are a pot for cooking things in.  I suppose you could throw some lettuce and sliced/chopped veggies into a Dutch oven, toss it with some dressing and serve it as is!

Still, you can cook some elements of a salad.  That’s one reason I love big chef’s salads.  With meat, veggies and seasonings, they can be a whole meal themselves.  So, that’s why I decided to try this one that way.  The hamburger salad!

The lettuce goes from simple topping, then, to the basis of the dish.  The meat, on the other hand, becomes the topping!  What about the bun?  I turned that into croutons!  The sauces of the hamburger (ketchup, mustard, mayo) combined with other spices to make a dressing for both the meat and the rest of the salad.

Dutch Oven Deconstructed Hamburger Salad

Meat and sauce

12” Dutch Oven
22 coals below

• 2 lbs ground beef
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• salt
• pepper

• ½  cup Ketchup
• ~3 Tbsp Mustard
• ~2 Tbsp Mayonnaise
• 1 Tbsp dill relish
• cayenne
• salt
• pepper

Croutons

12” Dutch Oven

10-12 coals below
14-16 coals above

• 4-6 hamburger buns
• 1 stick butter
• Seasoning Salt
• pepper

The Salad

• 1 head iceberg lettuce (or other greens)
• 1-2 tomatoes
• Grated cheddar cheese

Of all the elements for this dish, I was the least confident in the croutons, so I started with those.  I lit up some coals and, when they got white, I put them under one of the 12” Dutch ovens.  I put in the butter to melt, while slicing up the buns.  I did them in long, narrow strips, almost looking like french fries.  I think that next time, I’ll just cube them, so they look a little more like traditional croutons.  They’ll be easier to stir and handle.

Once the butter had melted, I shook in a liberal amount of the seasoning salt, maybe a teaspoon’s worth or so.  I added the pepper the same way, maybe a little less.  I tossed in the sliced bread and just stirred it thoroughly to coat each piece in butter and seasoning.

I actually had fewer coals on as I started, but I could soon see that it needed to be hotter to get the toasty brown I wanted.  So, I upped the numbers, as they’re written above.  I just kept the lid on and stirred them frequently to keep them browning, but not burning.

I got some more coals under another 12” Dutch oven, and diced the onions and minced the garlic.  I poured in some olive oil to heat up, then tossed in the garlic and onions with a little salt.  They started sizzling immediately, and I let them saute.

When they were getting a bit brown, I put in the meat to brown as well.

While that was cooking, I mixed up the sauce.  I started with the ketchup, and that was really the only one that I measured.  The rest I just mixed in and tasted as I went.  I was simply striving for a balance of flavors.

I stirred it up, then poured it in with the meat.  I stirred that, and let it cook for a little, but not much.  I wanted it to be a part of the meat, but not to evaporate or reduce.

Finally, the meat was done, the croutons were nicely roasted and brown, and it was time to assemble the salad

I started by shredding the lettuce and dicing the tomatoes.  I used the lettuce as the base of the dish, then added tomatoes on top.  I spooned some meat liberally over the base, and sprinkled some croutons on top of that.  Finally, I topped it by grating some cheddar on top.

My whole family pronounced this one a success!  I was pleased, too, not only because I enjoyed the taste, but that it was a new take on the burger (for me, anyway), and yet it still maintained a lot of the original burger taste. It had some salty and sour tones, and some sweet from the ketchup in the sauce.  The lettuce, of course, had a hint of bitter tone, and its texture made it feel like a salad.

Here are more cast iron dutch oven recipes, and Dutch oven cooking.

Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Deconstructing the Hamburger!

OK, it’s time for our next deconstruction challenge, to see if anyone is up to the task.  A few weeks ago, we did the beloved PBJ.  This week, we’ll tackle another traditional american dish:  The hamburger!


So, how do you do this?  How do you tear it apart?  How do you put it back together?  What could you possibly do with this that hasn't already been done a million times before?

Well, first of all, let’s look at the basic ingredients of a traditional hamburger:

• Ground beef
• Ketchup
• Mustard
• Cheddar (or plastic) cheese
• Onions
• Pickles
• lettuce
• Mayonnaise
• And, of course, the bun

Now, imagine that you were on an episode of “Chopped” or “Iron Chef” and you were just given a basket full of those ingredients and told to cook something with them.  What would you do?  I suppose that not all of these are required, and you might think of even more to add to the mix.

What will your deconstructed burger taste like?  Look like?  Your time begins...

...NOW!




Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.




Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Dutch Oven Dolmades

When I first heard of dolmades (or “dolmas”, or just “rolled grape leaves”), I was kinda grossed out.  It didn’t sound very good.  But once I had tried them, I was hooked.  I love these things!  And when I started doing dutch ovens, I knew that at some point I was going to try to make them.

My wife’s cousin, Michelle, knows how to cook a lot of Middle-eastern and Mediterranean foods, so I asked her to come over and show me.  So, she did!  There was one major miscommunication, that I somehow missed, and I cooked the rice before hand.  Shouldn’ta done that.  But other than that, it all turned out.

The idea was to kind of do a whole greek/middle eastern meal: Dolmades, a chicken/rice/lemon soup, and baklava.  It didn’t turn out quite as I had anticipated.  I think I shoulda taken it a bit at a time.  The soup was blah, but the dolmades and the baklava turned out great.


As I was preparing to write up the recipe, here, I did a little research, and confirmed some things I already kind knew.  Like, that there are soooo many variations of this dish that you really can’t do it wrong.  Even from family to family, the flavor and the recipes change so much.  It all remains similar, but don’t be afraid to make it your own.

Dolmades in a Dutch Oven

12” dutch oven
20+ coals below for the meat filling
12-15 coals above and below for the final cooking.

    * olive oil
    * 1 medium to large onion, diced
    * 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
    * 1-1 ½  lbs of ground meat (pretty much any kind except pork, and not a sausage)
    * 1-2 Tbsp Baharat
    * Other spices or flavorings, as you choose, like:
          o cinnamon
          o Allspice
          o minced fresh parsley
          o minced fresh mint leaves
          o pine nuts
          o lemon zest
          o salt
          o pepper
    * 1 ½ cups uncooked rice
    * extra water, as needed


    * Grape leaves, blanched


    * 2-3 tomatoes, chopped
    * 3 cups chicken stock or water
    * More alternate flavorings:
          o Lemon juice and lemon wedges
          o 2-3 cloves garlic, sliced



This adventure started by putting about 20 coals under a dutch oven with a little oil in the bottom.  I diced up an onion and minced the garlic cloves and, when the oil was hot enough, tossed them in to saute.  If they sizzle and jump right away, you know it was hot enough.  I ground on a little salt, too.

Once the onions were browned a little, I added in the meat.  This time, I used ground turkey.  If I can acquire it next time, I’ll use lamb, but ordinary ground beef is ok, too. As that was browning, I added in the baharat.  Baharat is a mix of spices commonly used in middle eastern cooking.  You can buy it at a specialty market, or using the wikipedia as a guide, mix your own.  Really, the seasonings and the flavorings are completely up to you.  Again, there are so many regional and familial variations on this dish that you really can’t go wrong.

Once this is cooked, I pulled it off the heat and let it cool some.  Then, I added in the rice.  Don’t cook the rice.  That was a mistake I made.  With all this, the filling is ready.


I rinsed out the dutch oven, and wiped it down. I spread a little olive oil in the bottom, and we got ready to roll the dolmas.  One suggestion that Michelle made was to spread a layer of chopped tomatoes over the bottom of the pan, to raise up the dolmas and make them not burn or stick to the pan.  That sounded like a great idea, but we didn’t have any tomatoes.  You try it and tell me how it works.  Instead, we covered the bottom of the pan with one layer of flat grape leaves.

So, here’s how to roll the dolmas:

   1. Separate out a grape leaf, and pinch off any of the stem that’s left.
   2. Lay it flat, with the vein side up, and unfold it, if there are any folds.
   3. Spread a finger-width spot of filling (about 2 finger joints long) on the leaf.  Put it just above where the stem was. (see the picture).
   4. Fold the lower part of the leaf up and over the filling.
   5. Fold the sides over the filling
   6. Roll it the rest of the way up
   7. Place it on the leaves or the tomatoes in the bottom of the dutch oven, making a single layer of dolmas.

   8. Keep going.  You can add on a second layer if you have enough leaves and filling.



After we’d rolled up all of our filling, I added some of the garlic slices and lemon slices on top.  Then we poured on the stock.  The dolmas tended to float a little, and Michelle said you can put a plate on them to weigh them down.

This went on the coals.  As I did some research afterward, some people cook them in a skillet, uncovered.  I used the coals listed above, with the dutch oven lid on, half above, half below.  You don’t need to cook it long, just to cook the rice and the leaves.  Maybe about 10-15 minutes, once it’s boiling.  I would watch for venting steam out of the lid of the dutch oven, and pull them off about 10 minutes or so later.

Now, at this point, we were pretty busy making the soup and the baklava, so I didn’t make any of the cucumber yogurt sauce (tzatziki) that I love so much with dolmades.  But I added a link to the recipe.

So, on to the Baklava!






Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Mark's Black Pot Goulash

When you're looking for something to cook with some ground beef or some stew meat, and you're not sure what, you really can't go wrong with Goulash.  It's easy and tasty.  In this case, I happened to have a pound of stew meat wrapped up and frozen, and I thought I'd use it.  I just did a few 'net searches to get an idea of what to put in, and this is what I came up with.

 

Mark's Dutch Oven Goulash

12" Dutch Oven
15-20 coals below

• oil
• 2 med onions
• 2 stalks celery
• 4 cloves garlic
• salt

• 1 lb stew beef (or ground beef)

• 1-2 cups chicken stock
• 1 can corn, drained
• 2 small cans tomato sauce
• oregano
• basil
• salt 
• pepper

• 1 lb bag of egg noodles

More optional ingredients to consider in the third step:

• Paprika (the stronger stuff)
• Crushed red peppers
• A bit of milk or cream (like a quarter or half cup)
  

I just started off with a lot of coals underneath my 12" dutch oven, with a little oil in the bottom (maybe a tablespoon's worth, or a capful).  While that was getting good and hot, I sliced up the onions, the celery, and minced the garlic.  Once the dutch oven was hot, I dropped the first set of ingredients in, and sauteed them.

Here's a hint, by the way, about onions.  Don't store them outside, or, like I did, in your garage in the winter.  They partly froze, and so they didn't sautee and carmelize very well.  They still tasted OK, just not as good as they would've if I'd known.  But now you know!

Once the onions were as done as they were gonna get, I moved them aside, and put the meat in to brown.

Step three was to add almost everything else (except the noodles).  At that point, it was all pretty runny, more like a soup.  I was a bit nervous, actually.  I considered adding some kind of flour or other thickener, but decided to wait and see what would happen after the noodles cooked.  That turned out to be a wise choice.  By the time the noodles were "al dente", they had absorbed much of the liquid and it was a nice, thick goulash.  The family loved it!


Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.



Mark's Other Blog Posts: Optimizing an eCommerce Website, Mark's LDS Rock Music Downloads,

Dinner in a Pumpkin in a Dutch Oven

This dish is traditional for us this time of year. Typically, when there's a Halloween party for our group of parents of special needs kids, or a church party, my wife will make this meal. It's really cool, because the presentation is so seasonal.

The basic idea is that you hollow out the pumpkin, and fill it with a hamburger, rice, veggie, and sauce mix, then bake the whole thing. When you serve it up, the pumpkin itself becomes the serving bowl. You spoon out the meal mix, and as you do, you scrape in some of the baked pumpkin. The flavors all blend. It's delicious!

And I'm NOT a big fan of gourds and squash!

Dinner in a Pumpkin in a Dutch Oven

12" Dutch oven (browning and sauteeing)
8" Dutch oven (rice)
14" Deep dutch oven (baking the meal)

22 coals above, 12 coals below (maybe a few more because it was a bit cold and windy)

• 1 Cup rice
• 2 Cups water

• 1-2 Tbsp olive oil
  
• 2 Medium onions, chopped or sliced
• 3-4 Stalks celery, chopped
• 2-3 Cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
  
• 1 lb Ground beef
• 1 Can cream of something soup
• salt
• Pepper
• Parsley
  

• 1 pumpkin, smaller and kinda flat
• 2 tsp chili powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 Tbsp Brown Sugar
  

I started out by heating up some coals. I got the rice and water cooking in the small 8", and started sauteeing the onions, celery, mushrooms and garlic in the 12". When I cook rice, I just watch it until steam starts venting, then take it off about ten minutes after that. It usually works. When you're sauteeing veggies, you want the oven to be pretty hot, enough that the oil in the bottom looks "shimmery" and the veggies simmer the moment they hit the pan.

Once the veggies were looking a bit carmelized, I added the ground beef and browned it.

While that was cooking, I prepared the pumpkin. I have to say it was a challenge to pick the right pumpkin. I had to get out my tape measure and measure the inside of the 14" dutch oven, and then measure all of the pumpkins at the store. I must've looked pretty funny walking around measuring each pumpkin. I felt a little like Linus from Peanuts, making sure that his pumpkin patch was sincere enough for the Great Pumpkin.

I found one that was kinda flat when laid on its side, and yet I realized that there was still no way it would fit into the oven. It was still to high. So, I just decided to cut it into a bowl shape and move on.

What I did was to place the pumpkin in the dutch oven, and, using a knife, mark the "lid level" all the way around the pumpkin. Then I too it out and cut the top off using that knife mark as a guide. Finally, I hollowed out the seeds, and scraped off the fibrous parts.

Then, I got out the chili powder, and the cinnamon and sprinkled those around the inside. I tried to get all up the sides as well. I spread the the brown sugar around as well, and rubbed it all in.

Then, I brought all the other dutch ovens in and mixed their contents together with the can of soup and the seasonings. This glop I poured into the pumpkin and placed it into the 14" deep dutch oven. The lid fit nicely!

I put that oven out on the coals for almost two hours. I kept sticking the pumpkin rind with thin bamboo skewers, and when I felt little resistance, I knew it was soft and ready to serve.

My kids kept saying that they wouldn't eat the pumpkin, but they both did. A good way to get kids to eat squash, right? It was a real treat, and it's fun to see the food coming right out of the dutch oven.

The next time I do this, I'm going to try it with the dutch oven upside down. That is, I'll put the lid on the bottom, on a lid stand over the coals, and put the body of the dutch oven on top, with coals around the legs. That way, when I serve, the lid will look like a tray, and it won't be hidden down in the oven...

Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Mark's Other Blog Posts: Revelations, Mixing Martyrs,

"Throw it all in the Dutch Oven" Chili

Today, Jodi had a Christmas party with her work. She helps other parents of special needs children. So, we were serving soup in a bread bowl. I made some dutch oven chili. Chili, I've discovered, is a very easy dish to make, and I've learned a few tricks.

One trick is to add cinnamon. Yummy spice, that adds some good kick, but a different kind of kick. One that you don't expect.

Another cool trick is, toward the end of the cooking, to add about a half cup of corn masa or crushed corn chips. It thickens up the broth with a rich flavor and aroma.

Other than that, it's pretty much the same as any other chili. There are a few key ingredients, and the rest of it is just what every you have on hand. Chili is one of those things that you can make with a pretty wide variety of ingredients. So, I just threw some things in.

Dutch Oven Combo Chili

12" dutch oven
20+ coals underneath

The essential ingredients

1lb ground beef or other beef
2-3 medium onions
3 cans beans with liquid
2 cans tomatoes with liquid
1/2 cup corn masa harina or crushed tortilla chips

The other things I added today (you can add whatever you like to it)

2 tbsp garlic
1-2 jalapeno peppers, cored and seeded, chopped
2-3 bell peppers
Liberal amounts of
Parsley
Cilantro
Salt
Pepper
cumin
cinnamon

Other things you could add

Celery
Crushed red peppers
lemon juice
Brown sugar
Barbecue sauce

This is a great dump meal, basic dutching. But you can also do it in a couple of steps. The first step would be to brown the meat and sautee the onions and garlic, and then add the other ingredients. I added it and let it simmer for about an hour and a half. Then we took it to the party and it was wonderful. Great fun.

Dutch Oven Shepherd’s Pie

After several weeks of more strange and exotic recipes (someone on the dutch oven cooking yahoogroup said, “Mark’ll try anything!” – which I took as a compliment), I did decide to do something more traditionally dutch oven. I was going through my new cookbooks and found a recipe for Shepherd’s Pie. I looked it over, and was intrigued, so I tried it, and made it my own, of course, with a few mods.

This recipe is in a couple of steps. It’s not difficult, but there are a lot of things to do to get it done.

Dutch Oven Shepherd’s Pie

2x 12” dutch ovens, charcoals vary with the step

• 8-10 small to medium potatoes
• ¼ cup milk
• 3 tbsp butter
• Salt and Pepper

• 1 ½ to 2 lbs ground beef (could substitute lamb, if you can find it)

• 1 cup beef broth
• ¼ cup flour
• Two large carrots
• One large onion
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• liberal shakes of Worcestershire sauce
• Liberal shakes of parsley, rosemary, oregano
• Liberal shakes of salt and black pepper

I started with a lot of coals, maybe 20 or so, underneath each of two 12” dutch ovens. In one were the potatoes, peeled and cubed. In the other was the ground beef, browning. Actually, I ended up putting more coals on top of the potatoes as well. You want to get it good and boiling.

Once those both were done, I brought them both inside (it was cold out) and I drained the potatoes. I added the milk, the butter and the salt and pepper, and mashed them all up with a whisk.

Then I put them in the fridge with the meat, cleaned up the ovens, and went to church.

After church, I came back and put the meat in one of the 12” dutch ovens, and added everything else in the third ingredient set. The original recipe instructions called for sautéing the onions, garlic, mushrooms and carrots first, then adding the meat and broth, but by this time, I’d already taken a lot of steps to cook this and I wanted to simplify. So, I just dumped it all in and mixed it up.

Then, I spread the potatoes on top. I had actually not used this many potatoes, and in a 12” dutch oven, I couldn’t completely cover the meat, so that’s why the recipe above has more. The book suggested dragging a fork through the potatoes to make a pattern, and I thought that was a pretty cool idea, so I did it.

Then, I put it on the coals to make about 350 degrees. Normally that’s about 8-9 below, and 16-18 above. I ended up with about 12 below and about 22 above because it’s winter. I left that on for about 40 minutes. Also, in an attempt to brown the top of the potatoes, after that I put all the coals on top and let it cook for about another 20 minutes more. It didn’t really brown up much. But then, it’s a wet dish in a dutch oven, so it’s not so likely to brown anyway.

But it did taste delicious! I loved the herbal flavor. Then, to make it a truly international feast, a mexican friend of mine heated up some corn tortillas. That was just the thing!

Guest Blogger: Brendon's Dutch Oven Meat Salad

Hi, my name is Brendon. I’m Mark’s son, and I do dutch oven, too.

Today, I got to cook in the dutch oven with my own recipe. This is my “meat salad.” I call it meat salad because there’s lots of meat, and there’s some vegetables, too. You can choose any three meats, but we did sausage, hamburger, and chicken. You can also choose your own vegetables. And here’s my recipe

Brendon’s Meat Salad

10” Dutch oven
8 coals below, 15 coals above

12” Dutch oven
9 coals below, 17 coals above

• ½ lb of pork sausage
• ½ lb of ground beef
• 1 chicken breast
• 3 medium red potatoes, sliced
• 2 medium onions, sliced
• 3 Tbsp butter
• Seasoning salt
• Steak seasoning
• Salad seasoning
• 2 Tbsp flour

First, slice the chicken into strips. Form the sausage and hamburger into meatballs (or whatever shape you like). Put the meat into the 12” dutch oven. Add a few shakes of seasoning salt and steak seasoning.

Then, put the sliced vegetables into the 10” dutch oven. Add the butter and a few shakes of salad seasoning.

Put each dutch oven on the coals and cook for 20 minutes, stirring the vegetables. Mix both dutch ovens into the 12”, stir and cook for 20 more minutes. Once mixed together, add the flour and stir it to thicken the juices.

It tasted really good! This is the third time I’ve cooked in the dutch ovens, and had only a little help from dad.

Tell me how you liked it when you try it!

Extra comments from Mark: Brendon is a young guy, about to turn 10, and he's taken to helping me cook, when he's not playing his Nintendo DS, or watching "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy." This time, he asked me to let him cook. So, we talked about his recipe ideas, and got all the ingredients together. He's quite inventive. And it actually turned out very delicious! I'm quite proud of my young black pot chef!

Meatball Surprise

Normally, I cook on Sundays, but tomorrow we’re going out of town, and, in fact, I’m taking a couple of my ovens with me to loan to some friends for a week or so. The wife of the family is in charge of a church-run girl’s camp, and needs it for them.

So, today, I made a variation of a dish my own wife used to make when we first got married. It was kinda fun to get nostalgic with her over the meal.

Meatball Surprise

12” dutch oven
8-9 coals below
16-18 coals above
You’ll need a side fire, because this one runs over an hour.

• 2 lbs ground beef
• 1 egg
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• A bunch of sprinkles of cayenne hot sauce (about 2 tsp)
• 2 Tbsp minced garlic
• Seasonings (I used salt, pepper, seasoning salt, some mixed dried chopped veggie thing I had (sorta like mrs Dash, but not chopped as fine)
  

• 1 8oz brick of cream cheese
• 2-3 small-med potatoes, quartered and sliced
• 2 cans of Cream of Mushroom Soup
  

• 1 Cup rice
• 2 Cups water or chicken broth

Start by mixing everything in the first set all together, stirring with a wooden spoon and getting it all blended really nice.

Then grab up a fistful and make a ball, about the size of a tennis ball, maybe a tich smaller. Make a hollow in the middle, and slice off a little bit of cream cheese. Put that in the middle of the ball and fold the meat mixture around it. Reform it into a ball, and put it in the dutch oven. In my 12” oven, I made a ring of about seven or eight meatballs, and two in the middle.

Then take the potato slices and scatter them in between the meatballs. Finally, ladle on and spread the Cream of Mushroom soups over the top of it all. After that, I salted and peppered on top (I love coarse ground pepper).

Set it out on and under the coals. Turn it every 15 to 20 minutes. In the meantime, in a smaller oven cook the rice. I normally would have done that in my 8”-er, but today, we had some rice leftover from Chinese take-out. Shhhh… Don’t tell anyone that I didn’t make it myself…

I cooked it for about 1 hr, 20 minutes, until the meat was done, the sauce was bubbling, and the potatoes were soft. If we’d had some, I probably would have sprinkled on some grated cheddar cheese just as it was finishing, and then set the lid back on to melt the cheese

When it’s all done, serve the meatballs on top of the rice. Spoon a bunch of the sauce over the meatballs and over the rice. It’s delicious!

On this particular day, I used my 10” to cook up some brownies from a mix. I know, I know, I’m a lazy butt. But it’s almost a hundred degrees out, and I’m not up to it. So, bleah…

Two New Recipes, One in the Wild!

We got two entries in the blog this week. That’s OK, because it’s been a while since I cooked.

Friday night, our church had what’s called a “Father’s and Sons Campout”. As the name implies, all the dads in the ward take all their sons camping, to the same location. Great time to spend together. Since Jodi was out of town over the weekend, it was good timing, too.

After I got the tent set up, I pulled out the DO, my original 12”-er, and started cooking. I made an old favorite of mine.

Mark’s WOW Layered Meatloaf

12” DO
8-9 coals below
16 coals above

The basic meatloaf:
1 1/2 lb ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
½ cup bread crumbs (or better, crushed crackers or croutons)
2 eggs
Catsup or BBQ sauce to taste
Salt, Pepper, Worcestershire to taste

The other layers:
1 lb medium pork sausage
About 2 cups grated cheddar (I like sharp cheddar, but it’s also good with other yellow cheeses, like Colby or CoJack)

Mix the ground beef, onion, bread crumbs, eggs, sauces, and spices. You could actually use your own favorite meatloaf recipe if you prefer. Divide it in half.

Spread one half of the beef meatloaf mixture in the bottom of the DO. Don’t worry about greasing the bottom, it’ll be plenty greasy on it’s own. Sprinkle a layer of Cheddar. Spread the sausage, then another layer of cheddar. Spread a top layer of meatloaf mixture and then a last sprinkling of cheddar.

Bake, and make sure to turn the oven and the lid about every 15-20 minutes to keep from burning. It goes about an hour. While it’s the best tasting Meatloaf I’ve ever eaten, it’s NOT lowfat! I spoon off the drippings before serving.

This is actually the first time I’ve gotten to cook this “in the wild” so to speak. And actually, it's only the second time I've cooked that way at all. Most of the time it's safe on my back porch, bringing things out from the kitchen. In the woods, it’s kinda tricky, because there’s no table to chop up the onions on, or anything. You just gotta improvise.

This is actually the second time I’ve made this meatloaf, and I really didn’t alter the recipe from the first time. Well, not true. The first time, the sausage was hot, and, while I like hot sausage, I found it overpowered the tastes of the other meat. So, I went with medium this time.

I got some pics, to, and this time, they were shot with a real camera, so they look a lot better.

A Palestinian Dish

One of the things I love about doing dutch oven cooking is that it can cook so much, and such a variety. That’s why I’m constantly on the lookout for dishes that I can make that take it a bit beyond the cobblers, biscuits, and barbecue chickens that are the staples of the backporch kitchen. I love telling someone that I just cooked this or that, and seeing the looks on their faces when they say, “I didn’t know you could do that in a dutch oven!”

Having said that, let me tell you another story. My wife’s cousin married a Palestinian man, named Issa. He and I have become pretty good friends. He’s pretty cool, but overall he’s had a tough time adjusting to life in America. Still, after three years or so, he’s catching on.

He makes a traditional Palestinian dish, called Kofta bi Tahini. Kofta is a mixture of ground meat (usually beef, but sometimes lamb) and herbs and spices. It’s shaped into a sort of cigar shape, and then cooked in lots of different ways, like baking or grilling. But my favorite is when it’s baked with potatoes and a Tahini sauce.

My wife thinks this is kind of an acquired taste, but, personally, I acquired it pretty fast. I could chug this stuff non-stop. It does have a pretty strong taste. If you aren’t used to foreign foods, and you want to try this, then you might use a little less parsley and a little less lemon juice. But, to me, that's what makes it great.

Anyway, in my effort to be a little bit different, today I made this Palestinian meal in my American dutch oven. Talk about an multi-national experience...


Kofta bi Tahini

12” Dutch Oven
10 briquettes below
16 briquettes above

1 lb ground meat (lamb or beef (maybe mixed))
1/3 cup chopped parsley (preferably fresh, but I’ve also used dried)
1 med onion, chopped
1 tsp salt
3 tsp mid east spices (baharat, cinnamon, ginger)
1 tbsp olive oil

2 medium potatoes, sliced ¼ inch
1 cup rice

1 cup Tahini paste (sort of like peanut butter, except it’s made with sesame seeds instead of peanuts. You can get it at natural food stores and middle eastern markets. Mainstream supermarket staff will look at you funny when you ask them for it. Trust me…).
½ cup lemon juice
2 cups water


Start with the meat. I usually use ground beef, because I have such a hard time finding lamb. I did find some when I made the Irish stew, but that’s another story. Put the meat, the parsley, the onion, the salt, the spices, and the oil in a bowl and stir it all up. When it’s all nicely blended, scoop some up in the palm of your hand and squeeze it into a finger or cigar shape, maybe about three inches long, and a little thicker than your finger. Set these aside.

Slice potatoes into ¼” quarter slices.

Then, scatter a cup of uncooked rice over the bottom of your dutch oven. Layer the potato slices on top of the rice. Place the Kofta shapes on top of the potatoes in a ring, with a couple in the middle.

Mix tahini, lemon juice, and water It’ll take some stirring to dissolve the tahini and blend it all. Pour the mixture over the meat, potatoes and rice, covering all.

Then put it on the coals. I baked it for about 45 minutes, turning the lid and the oven often, but not opening the lid everytime. Toward the end, check on the rice. Some of the grease from the meat will seep down and make the rice crispy, so you don’t want to overcook the rice.

This dish is traditionally served with this Arabic salad (on the side):

2 cucumbers , chopped
4 small tomatoes , chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
small finely diced onion (optional) , chopped
½ jalapeno pepper, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
¼ c lemon juice
tablespoon olive oil (optional)
¾-1 cup of plain yogurt


Mix the cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, jalapeno, and onion in a bowl. Just before serving, add the salt, lemon and olive oil and stir. Last of all, spoon in the yogurt and stir it all up.

I honestly don’t know which I like better, the Kofta or the salad. I could eat them both until I explode. But you be the judge. And, if you end up acquiring the taste, then you can join me for dinner someday!