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Cooking with Gilman

Cooking a roast in a dutch oven has been my holy grail. I've also been captivated by the idea of cooking it packed in rock salt - how does that change the roast? Does it help turn out a better roast? How salty is the result? I'm glad to have finally answered these questions.

I followed the directions from here roughly following the directions and some other tips I've picked up on the dutch oven Yahoo mailing list. I got a standard couple-pound pot roast from the grocery and cooked it in rock salt. It took 2.5 boxes to surround the roast in my 12 incher. I let it cook for the three hours recommended in the blog post with a 12/10 coal split and 6/4 coal replenishment every hour. This is where the plan fell apart: my internal sense of roast sizes did not flag that the massive five-bone rib roast in the blog post is much larger than the pot roast I get at the store. I really only needed about 2 hours of cooking for a nice medium rare roast. The extra hour pushed me to medium done. Getting the roast out was interesting - I had been told that the salt forms a shell around the roast and was eager to see what that looks like. In my case the shell was reasonably tough - resistant to stabbing with most tools - but I was still able to get the meat out. The roast shrunk about an inch in size creating an air gap on the inside of the shell which was probably due to the extra cooking hour it had. The salt can't really be recovered for later roasts.

Aside from the extra doneness the roast was a success. You do need to scrub the meat a bit to get all of the salt off - leaving a single salt chunk will throw the taste off so you need to get everything. Hopefully with less cooking time it is possible to portably cook a roast consistently.

You can see the air gap between the shell and the roast. The top, loose salt has been scraped away.


I made Frito casserole for some friends at a campout. The recipe isn't complicated or particularly healthy but it is very tasty. It even got a few recipe requests! The only substitution I made was switching out for low-sodium cream of mushroom. It cooked for about 25 minutes in my 10 incher dutch oven with a 14/7 coal split. The resulting casserole had fully melted cheese and the internal goop was hot enough to require cooling a bit. The Frito chips are mostly softened by the enchilada sauce but there are still some crispy ones around the edges.

I've also made this recipe before in an oven without modifications. It won't impress anyone but is certainly satisfying.

I've finally given biscuits and sausage gravy a shot. It's one of my favorite breakfasts and one I don't have a whole lot of experience with given my Yankee upbringing. My sausage recipe came from a Google search and my biscuits came from this forum post.

There were actually two attempts at biscuits and gravy. I skimped on sausage the first time and got some really cheap stuff which cooked down to leave me with no grease. No grease = no gravy. The biscuits came out really well though with a noticeable buttermilk taste throughout. I even got a little bit of a crispy crust! This recipe makes perfect biscuits - if you can deal with all the butter.

One of the first batch of biscuits. Battery for reference. These biscuits were made in my biscuit pan giving the nice shape. It's also a frankenstein biscuit made of two biscuits sitting on top of each other.

For round two I went to the store and got the name brand Jimmy Dean sausage. It didn't quite give me the two tablespoons+ of grease I wanted (around 1-1.5) but I worked with what I had. The gravy was a technical success: patience gave me a gravy without lumps. The finished product was a bit flavorless though - I probably worked in too much flour for my smaller portion of grease. It's supposed to be a 1:1 ratio for the roux. I also went out and got a cookie cutter to help with cutting the biscuits - the glass I picked last time turned into a mess. Unfortunately when cutting the biscuits I accidentally used the smaller cutter resulting in many thin biscuits with no fluffy insides. I also didn't stack them the second time around. Stacking them would give even my smaller cut biscuits more fluffy matter inside so I think I'll always go with stacking in the future.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: sausage gravy

The failed second attempt at biscuits. The mutant in the top right was made from leftover scraps.

Here's the order for making them come out at the same time. I cooked the sausage the night before. The sausage took half an hour and the rest took an hour.

  1. Mix dry biscuit ingredients.
  2. Fry up sausage the night before, drain and save both grease and meat.
  3. Melt grease and mix in flour for the roux. After you're happy with the roux I turned the heat down to low and returned to it every few minutes while making the biscuits.
  4. Start preheating the oven.
  5. Prepare the biscuits and put them in the oven.
  6. Start mixing in the milk to the roux. The article recommends medium heat. Go with whatever gets things boiling as that is the goal.
  7. The gravy should thicken to look like sausage gravy as the biscuits are getting done.

This recipe was taken from the Everyday Dutch Oven blog. As things neared towards Thanksgiving he started putting up seasonal recipes and descriptions of his (elaborate) Thanksgiving Dutch Oven setups. I saw this recipe earlier in the month and tossed it into my file because of the cranberry. Also, right before Thanksgiving I went to the local Tractor Supply Store for their Black Friday deals. They had a regular height 12 incher for $15 (marked down from $20). This recipe was the first thing I made in that oven and I look forward to using it for future baked things. It was also my first time in a Tractor Supply Store and I got to have a good look around: they did have an aisle of tractor supplies. Outside of that they're a dry goods store with a fair amount of cast iron.

I baked this for Thanksgiving lunch following the printed instructions sans pecans. I went with around 18 top/7 bottom but I don't remember exact numbers. I was also using already-burned coals so I just tried to make a ring and went from there. It cooked for a good 60 minutes with rotations every 15. I was getting up during the meal to turn the lid.

The final result was done but was not brown on top because of the dying coals. The resulting cobbler was incredible. The apple and the cranberry went together well and the topping excellent. All of the other desserts were also chilled setting this one apart from the pack and making it go well with ice cream. I wish I could have eaten more warm but I was already stuffed with Thanksgiving dinner and had only room for a small scoop of this incredibly rich cobbler. I ate all the leftovers cold. Oddly enough the cranberries picked up a bit of sparkly tartness which made them taste almost carbonated when cold. This is an excellent recipe and is certainly one I will break out again in the future.

I baked the same stew as the previous recipe with the few tweaks mentioned. The low-sodium cream of mushroom worked just as planned and picked up the flavor of the stew by letting you taste more than the salt. A few of the bacon pieces were not as crispy which some people complained about: I guess people don't want a whole bacon. I was in a time rush otherwise I would have made all the bacon crispy. The finished product was delicious and a very solid addition to my repertoire. Thanks to Aaron for helping me peel the potatoes at the DOG - I left my potatoes at home and had to run into town to get an emergency bag!

As I mentioned in the last post I did this recipe at the September DOG. There were a total of about 12 ovens and a pretty good turnout. I think I did pretty well against the comparison but the green chile stew was the clear winner. Here's some pictures and commentary:

Aaron helping cut potatoes for my stew

Browning the beef chunks for my stew in the dutch oven

The DOG setup earlier a few hours before dinner

I think this meat wound up in the green chile. In the background you can see some cornbread and the construction of a dump cake.

Grilled asparagus! Piping hot, a tiny bit crunchy and delicious. I've had them with salt and with oil and lemon zest and both are excellent.

The green stuff is this green, not really spicy chile. It came out with just a whole bunch of subtle, spicy flavors and blew us away. The macaroni and cheese pictured has a Velveeta sauce. The water was boiled in the oven and the mix was baked in the same oven.

A lineup of most of the ovens.

Serving pork tenderloin parmesan out of the oven.

My finished stew! Delicious.

I think this was some kind of pumpkin bread. It was soft and delicious.

On the right is a hamburger casserole.

A giant cookie! It came out pretty brown but it wasn't burnt and was still tasty.

Some nice and fatty dutch oven cheesy potatoes. Delicious. Establishing a good cheesy potato side in my DO is on the to-do list.

Gil's LotD readers: I've decided to bring my dutch oven cooking blog posts into this blog. If you're not interested in this or future blog posts there is a page available here with only links of the day on it. RSS readers can find a feed on that page as well.

This recipe was pulled off of the Yahoo dutch oven mailing list archives. I spent an hour or so the previous day looking for a stew recipe to polish up for the next DOG meeting and settled on this one. I prepared it without the onions, with a can of water and with only two carrots.

Dutch Oven Stew:
A very good stew recipe that was recently given to us!!
1 1/2 lbs sirloin steak, cubed (or stew meat)
1 lb small baby carrots (or cut some up)
6 medium potatoes, cubed
2 large onions, diced
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 can water (if desired)
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
1/2 to 1 lb bacon pieces, crisply fried -- reserve the fat you drain off
1. Bacon may be fried in Dutch oven or pre-fried (this saves Dutch oven time)
2. Brown sirloin cubes in half of the bacon fat -- lid off.
3. Add vegetables.
4. Mix soups and water and pour over meat and vegetables. Stir to mix.
5. Simmer with 10 coals on the lid and 15 underneath the Dutch oven for about 1 1/2 hours -- lid on the entire time. (Mike's note: I use the LSDOS "rings" method. Use one ring of coals below, 1 1/2 rings on the lid).
Serves 6 - 8.

The production of this meal turned out to be quite an ordeal. I misjudged how long it would take the chimney of 20-25 coals to start (10 mins) and spent a good 15-20 minutes cutting everything up. Upon rushing outside and seeing the coals ashed over in the chimney I started frying the bacon immediately. The coals were mostly dead however and in order to finish the frying job I had to start an entirely new chimney causing me to spend 30 minutes total on frying about 5 pieces of bacon. All of this wasted time made me cut it down to two carrots in order to get everything on the fire faster. Next time I'll be sure to cut up everything but the carrots before starting the chimney. I stuck to the 10 bottom / 15 top mostly and replenished coals 40 minutes in (at that time they had been lit for about 50-60 minutes). It cooked for 2 hours and I mostly rotated it every 15 minutes. There was some slacking at the end which gave me slight burning on the bottom and some of the meat on top.

The stew was cooked all the way through. The beef and potatoes were properly tender. Unfortunately the tiny amount of bacon and carrots seemed to disappear entirely among the potatoes. Even though the coals were mostly burned out the stew was still incredibly hot and needs to cool on the plate before eating. The finished product was incredibly salty owing to the canned cream of mushroom soup but still tasty.

I've decided to go ahead and do this recipe for the DOG meeting along with those oatmeal carmelita things. Next time I will do the entire half slab of bacon, add more carrots and bump up the potato count by a few. To counter the saltiness I'll try the low-sodium cream of mushroom soup and hope that things get diluted out a bit by increasing the ingredients. Finally, I do honestly believe my coal count was good and the burning just came from a lack of turning. Next time I'll hit top and bottom turns every 15 minutes to get a clean bottom.

I pulled this recipe from Everyday Dutch Oven. I hadn't cooked it before but decided to give it a shot at my first DOG! I understand it's kind of mean to try something out on strangers but I'll cook what I want to cook, damn it.

My first DOG was composed of a bunch of Omahans camping out in a state park just south of town. I had never been there before and the weather was just fantastic. They had a great little setup with heat tables, tools and plenty of charcoal. Despite all my preparations I still forgot a few things like pliers and plates. Whoops. The people were nice and we had wonderful dutch oven conversation all evening long! I will certainly be returning and will try and bring friends along. I also learned that my dutch oven is actually a deep oven! This would explain my baking variability. I guess I'll have best results with big entrees like soups and roasts. The DOG had plenty of fancy meals and the gauntlet has certainly been thrown down. I'll need to find something big for next month!

The cornbread was mostly a technical success. I had lots of little coals on the bottom and could have probably done with fewer as it was a bit brown on the bottom. It was also pretty moist. The taste was unfortunately really bland. It wasn't all that sweet and the corn kernels were just weird. Honey didn't save the recipe. I don't think I'll be repeating this recipe again.

I followed the recipe off the back of the Creamette macaroni box. Note: the proportions are for half of the box of noodles!

3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
2 1/2 cups milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (I just used a whole block which was probably closer to 3 cups)

Boil the noodles. Preheat oven to 350. In a saucepan melt butter and stir in flour to the liquid butter. Gradually stir in milk. Stir the mixture constantly over heat until it thickens. Once thickened, mix in the Cheddar cheese. Combine the noodles and sauce and bake for 30 minutes.

Coals were 6 bottom/17 top. I cooked for 30 minutes. I think that's a reasonable amount of time: another 10 minutes might have burned the bottom. As it was the bottom was fine. There was no burnt, crusty top although I think you could achieve it by taking 4 coals off the bottom at the 30 minute mark and putting them on top.

The result was tasty but not very cheesy! I guess you can put an entire block of Cheddar in and only get a bit of cheddar taste. The final sauce was not too smooth but I think that's more due to my roux inexperience. I really wanted a good macaroni and cheese recipe but I guess this one isn't it.

Mac and Cheese

The smashing success of the first recipe drove me to try and reproduce it about a week after the first cake. Although it was a while ago I think the two things I did differently were using tinfoil and redoing the coals. I think I was at 4 on the bottom and 18-19 at the top but there may have been 5 on the bottom. The tinfoil was used to help with the cake flip which came out perfectly this time.

I guess I added far too much nutmeg in this batch. Instead of a subtle nutmeg flavor it was overwhelming. Maybe the tinfoil kept too much nutmeg out of the bottom of the pan? If I do this again I'll probably do half the nutmeg in the batter and none in the topping.

Rhubarb cake

Despite everything working against me this recipe was delicious. It was taken from the Yahoo Dutch Oven mailing list. No pictures but it wasn't a pretty cake at all.

3 C. fresh rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch slices
1 C. sugar
2 tsp. all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 C. butter or margarine, melted
Batter:
1-1/2 C. all-purpose flour
3/4 C. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 C. butter or margarine, melted
2/3 C. milk
1 egg
sweetened whip cream, optional

Place rhubarb in a greased 10 inch dutch oven. Combine sugar, flour & nutmeg; sprinkle over rhubarb. Drizzle with butter.
For batter, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt & nutmeg in a mixing bowl. Add butter, milk and egg; beat mixture until smooth. Spread over rhubarb mixture.
Bake at 350° (21 coals for a 10" 14top/7 bottom) for 35 minutes or until the cake tests done. Loosen edges immediately and invert onto serving dish. Serve warm, topped with whipped cream in desired. 8 - 10 servings.

I followed everything as stated, including coal count. However, the recipe calls for a 10 incher and I used my 12. Everything was fine but I probably would up the rhubarb count from 3 cups to get a bit better coverage on the bottom. I also baked it for about 40 minutes and it came out slightly burnt in the middle bottom despite rotating the oven. That's probably the fault of lazy coal placement on the bottom. The flip was not very smooth: the cake sorta folded over itself in one part and I burned myself. I also lost a lot of rhubarb topping burnt and stuck to the bottom of the pan. Reading up on cake flips on the dutch oven mailing list I guess people use tinfoil for proper upside-down flips, if this cake is repeated (and it will be!) I'll have to do it in foil.

The topping perfectly captured what sugar and rhubarb should taste like. The cake was delicious and the butter and nutmeg gave a taste that was subtly buttery, creamy and nutmeggy. Up next is either a repeat of this or a rhubarb pie attempt. I may also need to reach out to friends or the general internet for more rhubarb!

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