Lodge 8 Quart Pre-Seasoned Cast Iron Dutch Oven with Lid - Heavy Duty Camping Cookware for Oven, Stove, Grill & Campfire - Perfect for Outdoor Cooking, Stews, Bread Baking & Camping Meals - Black

This Dutch oven purchase was my first. As with everything I get into, I immediately wanted to read up on them. I had no idea how great these things were! First, the history of the Dutch ovens alone should tell you they are no passing fad and have more than enough usefulness to qualify them on anybody's must-have list. They have been providing excellent, simple-to-cook meals for people since the days of the wagon trains. Cooking with charcoal makes the process so easy and cheap and the versatility of the Dutch oven allows it to go from griddle to saute pan to pot to oven by just changing up what you use and how you use it. The lid, inverted, is a griddle. This model's lid rim (a design attribute attributed to Paul Revere no less!) is raised to hold coals on top to aid in browning of foods (heat rises, so it's hard to brown the top unless you have coals on the lid).Lodge is now producing cast iron cookware that is pre-seasoned, saving you the step of seasoning it before using for the first time. A quick rinse and dry right out of the box and I was cooking. I did a chicken pot pie recipe that was super easy and used refrigerated crescent rolls, rolled out flat, for the crust. A fair amount of coals underneath at first to crank up the heat and pre-cook the chicken and then saute the onions and start the potatoes. Throw in the rest of the ingredients and get to a boil, stirring occasionally, then take a few of the bottom coals and put them on the lid, lowering the bottom heat and getting that important top heat going, then just place the unrolled crescent rolls on top, cover and let it bake. So-o-o-o good!!! Last night I did tamale pie for a party we went to. With hamburger and some homemade Chilean Langaniza sausage I'd made, I added some corn, Ortegas, olives, bell pepper, enchilada sauce, garlic, freshly ground coarse black pepper and chili powder. That cooked for a while and I mixed up some corn meal with milk and eggs, poured it over the hot food, covered with shredded cheese and cooked until done. Outstanding! The pot was emptied while all the rest of the food got token pickings. There is something about cast iron-cooked food... and it's healthier for you than Teflon.I love barbecue, cooking "low and slow" to get that tenderness and smoky flavor into my 'cue, and this oven allows that same principle to be incorporated (without the smoke, of course) in just about any meal. You need to nurture the coals during any cooking session, so someone must be there to tend them if you cook at really low temps, but that's about the only drawback, and most people will never do that anyway. I bought the metal table with windbreaker sides from Lodge and can't wait to use it. I cooked my first meal on my concrete patio and, while it worked great, it will be nice to get the oven up so I don't have to stoop to the ground to tend coals and stir/check contents, etc. I cooked the second meal under the shade of my canopy as it was sunny and warm, and I threw down a concrete paver that is about 2' x 2' and it worked great too... but I really want to use that new table!Cooking a huge amount? I got the 12" oven and it'll cook enough food for at least ten people in one swoop, and you can always buy the 12 qt. oven that will supply a single pot of food for a huge group but if you need to cook with multiple ovens at the same time, simply stack them. Once you get used to the cleanup method of NO SOAP and get your process down, it is really easy to clean up after cooking too. These products are simply incredible and I wish I had known more details about them before. They last for generations; people actually pass them on to their children. Looking forward to a long relationship with this product!