Dutch Oven Cooking becoming popular in area

By Editor | April 13, 2022 |

By Carmen Ensinger

Carmen Ensinger/Scott County Times
Chuck Frost checks on his creation cooking in a Dutch oven outside of Rural Cyclery in Winchester for a gathering of the Dutch Oven cookers recently. The Dutch Oven Gatherings, otherwise known as DOG, gather monthly at different locations around the area to socialize, eat and share recipes with one another.

Area Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts who are in the process of learning to cook over an open flame to earn a merit badge might want to keep what they learn in the back of their mind because when they get really, really old – say 30 or 40, those skills might become something they will want to pursue further like Chuck Frost of Winchester and many others have.

Frost hosted a Dutch Oven Gathering, or DOG as they are called, at Rural Cyclery in Winchester recently where members traveled from as far away as Chicago to attend, bringing their own Dutch oven recipes and braving the wind and cold to cook outside and share their recipes with others.

Frost will be the first to tell young Scouts to pay attention to what they are learning now because it will come in handy one day.

“When I was in Boy Scouts, one of the required badges we had to earn to become an Eagle Scout was a cooking badge,” Frost said. “So, I learned to cook at a pretty young age and then I also learned to cook some from my mom as well.”

But, as with all young men, he grew up, got married and other things started to take precedence. Ironically, it was cable television and the internet that brought back Frost’s love of cooking.

“I think it was 1995 when we got cable TV and the Food Network came on and I realized just how much I liked to cook and then I decided to get my first cast iron Dutch oven,” Frost said. “We also got the internet in 1995 around here and I got on Yahoo groups and I got to meet more people who were cooking with Dutch ovens and this is where I met my friend Leslie (Tennyson) and she and I began cooking together and sharing recipes.”

For several years, Frost and Tennyson would meet up and cook together and finally, around 2008, Frost formed the Lincoln Land Dutch Oven Cooks.

“Up until then, I would cook for my neighbors and they always had their friends that cooked and they would have a lunch once a month for their birthdays and so I cooked for them, Frost said. “One of the ladies that was there for their birthday suggested I start a group around here and one thing led to another.”

Frost said the gatherings are informal, more just social gatherings where members get together, socialize, cook good food together and then eat.

“My love is cooking and I love really good food so one of the things I love about Dutch oven cooking is that you can cook anywhere anytime,” Frost said. “All you need is charcoal and a fuel source to start it. Oh, and your ingredients. You don’t need heat or running water – just the pot and some heat.”

The one question Frost gets asked most often is just what one can cook in a Dutch oven. The answer is anything and everything.

“Anything you can cook in a home oven you can cook in a Dutch oven,” Frost said. “Desserts, appetizers, breakfast, lunch and supper. You can make anything from soup to bake a cake in a Dutch oven over an open fire outside. The possibilities are endless.”

But it is not as easy as just sitting the pot over an open flame like one might think. There is a method to cooking in a Dutch oven and it all has to do with the way a Dutch oven works. A Dutch oven is configured in order to allow charcoal briquets to be put on top of the lid to allow heat to radiate down from the top as well as up from the bottom such as would happen inside an oven.

“The secret to Dutch oven cooking is knowing how many coals to put on top of the oven and on the bottom for the proper cooking temperature,” Frost said. “After you do it several times, you figure out how to place the coals and what to do. You generally get about 45 minutes of heat out of each of the coals you turn the pots every 15 minutes while they are cooking. You generally get 45 minutes out of the coals and then have to add more if the food needs to cook more.”

Knowing a little rudimentary math might be a little helpful. Each charcoal briquette heats to approximately 10 degrees.

“For a 12-inch oven, we use 12 coals on the top and 9 on the bottom and generally you don’t need more heat in the cold,” Frost said. “But, with the wind like it is today, you really have to be careful to keep that heat on the pot so we are using the ring method where we put a ring on the top and a half ring on the bottom and that will give us the 350 degrees.”
Frost has 15 Dutch ovens of varying sizes.
“I started out with only one but am now up to 15 because you need the right size pot for the right size of what you are cooking,” Frost said. “Sometimes you find yourself cooking in four or five pots at the same time. Some of them are cast iron and some of them are aluminum.”

Frost has made a lot of friends through his Dutch oven cooking group, but Tennyson is by far his closest friend.

Frost and Tennyson began going to Dutch oven gatherings all over the United States, even attending several national events, which are hosted in a different state each year.

“My wife and I now travel all over the country to these events,” Frost said. “Leslie and I were at a National event and found ourselves volunteering to host the event in 2019.”
The two had a couple years to figure out what they were going to do and ended up hosting it in the Quad Cities.

“We ended up having people from 20 different states and two different counties (Canada and Australia) represented at this event,” Frost said. “At this event today, I had a group from southern Louisiana and one from southern California call me saying they were having similar events today. So, these events are going on all around.”