Dutch Oven- The Limitless Possibilities Of Open Fire Cooking

By Steve Smith

There are few things as relaxing and pleasing to the soul as a campfire.  A great activity to add to your campfire experience is dutch oven cooking.  You can enjoy dutch oven cooking outdoors at a campsite, but you can also do so at home in your BBQ pit or fire pan.  You just need a safe place to build a fire and create coals to place under, on and around your dutch oven.

The dutch oven can cook just about anything you can imagine.

The nature of the cast iron is very forgiving and easy to cook with.  One of the easiest and most rewarding dishes that the whole family will love is a simple peach cobbler.

Here's what you need:
A dutch oven.  When you're shopping for one make a decision on the size you need based on how many people you would likely feed at a time.  If it's just 2 people you may consider a #10 which is a little smaller pot.  Otherwise, the #12 will feed the whole family.

Aluminum foil- this makes clean up so much easier when cooking a cobbler.  Line the pan, pour your contents in and throw out the lining when it's all gone.  Now just wipe out the pot when you are done.

1 to 2 boxes of regular white or yellow cake mix.

2  to 3 cans of peaches-  You can buy them all in cobbler syrup, (the ones for cobbler cost 2 to 3 times more than just regular old canned peaches) or buy 1 cobbler kind and 1 or 2 of the plain canned peaches or whatever combination you like.  I like to have at least one can of the ones in syrup that are made for cobbler and 1-2 just plain old canned peaches.

A stick of butter

Pour in 2-3 cans of peaches and spread them evenly.  Pour the cake mix evenly throughout the pan covering the peaches.  Cut butter pads about 1/4 inch thick and spread evenly throughout the pot.  This helps create the crust.

Assuming you have a fire that has burned down to coals, spread coals out evenly, place the dutch oven on the coals and place coals on the lid of the dutch oven.  When you start to smell it, it's about ready.  Be careful if you decide to check it as it's easy to spill coals from the lid into the pot.

When it's ready, remove the oven from the coals and set away from the fire.  Let it cool for about 30 minutes.  Scoop a big heaping helping into your bowl and then reach into the homemade ice cream bin and put a big ol scoop next to the cobbler and hold on!