Dutch Oven Madness

It's official. I am mad about cooking outdoors with a dutch oven. This summers addition is a 12 inch, 9 quart oven that is capapble of feeding a small army. We took it camping across the bay and it was a culinary success every time.

I did a little research and asked a few trustworthy folks on the proper way to heat these ovens. The answer is charcoal briquets. A 12 inch oven requires 24 briquets; using the "plus 4, minus 4" technique we put 8 briquets underneath and 16 on top. This resulted in an oven temperature of 350 degrees fpr about 45 minutes.

 This wonderful dish is called a strata ,which means layers. We put down multiple layers of artisan bread, eggs and cream, sauteed vegetables with cream cheese, and a smoked king salmon topping. It was crazy delicious.

We also made a delicious rhubarb, cherry, strawberry crisp for dessert that was out of this world. Here also is a large lasagna that fed 10 people twice. It took quite a while to bake due to its voluminous size but was well worth the wait.