Quick Facts About Dutch Oven

• “Dutch oven” refers to a heavy cooking pot or kettle with a tightly fitting lid used for stewing and braising on the stove top or in an oven.
• It is usually made of cast iron though some are made of aluminum.
• The flat lid has a rim so that burning charcoal or wood can be placed on top while it is cooking over a fire below. This allows the pot to act like an oven with uniform heating.
• John G. Ragsdale, author of “Dutch Ovens Chronicled, Their Use in the United States” (University of Arkansas Press, 1991), suggests these theories regarding the orgins of the “Dutch oven” :
  • In 1704 a British man called Abraham Darby traveled from England to Holland to inspect a Dutch casting process where brass vessels were cast in dry sand molds. When he returned to England, he experimented with the process and eventually patented a casting process using a better type of molding sand as well as a process of baking the mold to improve casting smoothness. Then Darby began casting pots and shiped them to the new colonies and throughout the world. Ragsdale suggests that the name “Dutch Oven” may have derived from the original Dutch process for casting metal pots.
  • Others have suggested that early Dutch traders or salesmen peddling cast iron pots may have given rise to the name “Dutch Oven”.
  • Some believe the name came from Dutch settlers in the Pennsylvania area who used similar cast iron pots or kettles.
• The International Dutch Oven Society (IDOS) is a non-profit organization for dutch oven enthusiasts, with goals to preserve and promote the skills and art of Dutch oven cooking.
• The dutch oven is also a slang name for a practical joke played on bedmates by restraining them under the covers after gas has been passed.
• A camping, cowboy or chuck wagon dutch oven has three legs at the bottom and a flat, rimmed lid.

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