Spring/Summer of Dutch Oven (SODO)

About a month and a half ago, our office had a Chili Cook Off with a $100 cash (well, Visa Gift Card) prize for first place. I decided that I would enter with a Dutch Oven Recipe that I found on the Internet thanks to the good people at Utah Association of Geocachers.

I won. $100 that I still haven’t decided how to spend.

But that isn’t the point of the post. Since then I have cooked one dutch oven meal every week for my family. This will be a little bit of a challenge, because as of yet, I own one and only one 12″ dutch oven. It is great for casseroles, deserts, and roasts. But if I want to do a meal of separates, we might just have to use the conventional oven.

The meals that I have cooked have ranged from the pre-cook off test run of chili for the family. To this weekend we had breakfast before Conference out of the dutch oven. I cook the typical but always delicious peach cobbler. It wasn’t as brown on the top as I would have liked, and some of the peaches were a little burnt. They weren’t too burnt, just too far beyond caramelized.

Then to end the Conference we had a delicious Beef Roast with potatoes and carrots. Again it was excellent. The beef was a little too crispy on the bottom, but honestly, it tasted great. It almost added a little jerky flavor to the meal, and everyone liked it.  Hmm… I see a new family tradition starting…

Both of the recipes for this came from the Better Home & Garden’s Checkerboard Cookbook that my wife and I received on our wedding day (or she got it at a wedding shower). I mention that because in future posts, I hope to share the recipe. But since I am at work, I don’t have the recipe, so I am offering up the source.

As I just indicated, this is my first in a series of post about my adventures in dutch oven cooking. I hope to keep you posted weekly on which recipes I am using, and how it turned out. So, keep your taste buds under control this Spring/Summer, because I am going to be sharing some culinary delights. Just keep your eyes open for the SODO preface to indicate that it is about tasty goodness.