Lodge L10CO3 Cast Iron Camp Dutch Oven, 4-Quart

I recently took this dutch oven on a camping trip and cooked an apple cobbler in it. The cooking time took around 35 minutes and the cobbler was a golden brown and tasted delicious, cooking in the great outdoors makes food taste so good. This dutch oven is big enough to cook a meal for several people and it is nice to have a functioning oven out in the wild to cook baked goods. The dutch oven is made of very good quality and as long as you clean and season it after each use it will not rust if stored properly in a dry place.

Great product 10 quart size. I haven't used it yet.

On a New already Pre-seasoned Cast Iron Pot, I first wash it in hot water with a paper towel. I warm the pot in the oven to 150 degrees first. Use 2 potholders to remove the pot from the oven and put it on a wood cutting board and do the following: Buy Cheese Cloth in the Paint Dept. of Lowes or Home Depot. Cut a 4" X 7" piece, fold over to about 4 X 1 1/2 & fold in half.(Paper towels fall apart) I use vegetable oil, hold the cheese cloth on top of the bottle, hold tight & invert the bottle of oil. Don't soak the cloth, just 1 or 2 dabs. Wipe the bottom inside of the pot first, than without dabbing again do the inside walls of the pot, re-wipe the bottom inside to get more oil on cloth & do the inside walls again. You only want to see a shine so that the pot is coated, you don't want it wet. Do the same process on outside bottom & walls. If the first wiping of the inside came to wet, don't dab the cloth on the bottle to do outside of pot. Re-wipe the inside(bottom & sides) & apply to outside of pot, keep doing that until the outside is shining(not wet) If you put to much on the pot, the pot will come out sticky or tacky. Put pot upside down in oven (the pot will still be warm after oiling & oven will still be warm from 150 degrees setting. Now set the oven to 350 degrees, when it reaches 350 put a timer on for 1 hr. After 1hr., cancel oven temp & let the pot sit in the oven until it cools(maybe 3 or 4 hrs.) I do this whole process a second time with New Pre-Seasoned pots. The pots go from dark gray (New) to Black & shiny. Usually the second time the pot comes out a little tacky, what I do is put the pot in the oven part of the process again without any oil, this time & the pot comes out non-tacky & Black & Shiny. I have 6 Lodge Cast Iron Pots and 2 Old Mountain. The Old Mountain, in working mans words is junk. The metal is 1/2 as thick as the Lodge Brand & Old Mountain is very, very rough. Made in China. I wouldn't take them for free. Amazon has a great price on the whole Lodge line of Cast Iron. Amazon is not using the great packaging that they used last year or maybe quality of employees. I guess someone Smart wanted to make more profit. I had to return 2 items the last 2 weeks. "I didn't enjoy the hassle!!!" Coat pots with Costco Grill Spray Oil or Similar spray before cooking. Then enjoy your meal. Do the original process 1 time after scrubing with a Lodge Brush and hot water ONLY and oil while hot. Buy two Lodge Brushes because they break away from the handle.(Made in China) Do this process 1 time after each use and your Grandchildren will enjoy these pots someday. That alone is worth the time and effort.Lodge Cast Iron Brush is assembled in a way that it is conducive to rust and will come apart. I had a 2 ounce bottle of Gorilla Glue (bought on Amazon)that says its 100% Waterproof from another project. I had back-up Brushes but the broken brush head was still good. So, I tried the Gorilla Glue 6 months later and I'm still using my original Brush. The glue says to dampen surface first, than I put the glue in the hole and pushed the brush head in. I tapped the end of the brush gently standing on end on a hard surface to settle the glue in the hole, than I added a circle of glue on the outside. (Clean out the hole in the glue bottle with a toothpick and tap down before recovering). Don't use to much glue because it expands 3 times and gets hard in 24 hours. The glue will probably expand unevenly. I used "Trim" brand salon boards that ladies use to file acrylic nails. My wife uses them on my dog's nails after cutting. I did this process on my Danish Dough Wisk I bought on Amazon, which is constructed the same way as the Lodge Brush before I would have to worry about it eventually rotting out. "Where there is a will, there is a way".Ralph Romano

The only caveat that I have is with the handles. I had to open up the hook at the end of the handles to fit the Dutch oven handle slots.Still not smooth but it does not kill the deal. Buyer beware no joke extremely hot. I felt the burn two days after.

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!

Works well in my fireplace when the power goes out. Small enough to put in and take out safely when used with caution. The volume is probably just for 2 servings of meat. Can be used to bak bread etc.

The oven arrived fine, and looks great, but the wire handle (bail) was bent. Not Amazon's fault, but I would think Lodge would do a better job putting the parts in the box. I few minutes with the vise and a small hammer took care of the problem.