Last week, my neighbor let me take his Dutch oven and “rehab” it. As you can see from the pictures, it was pretty badly rusted. I did one of my own that had gotten all oxidized as well. Here, you can see a pic of them both. Mine is the long, oval one.
I started out by cleaning them off, using a wire brush attachment to my power drill. It wasn’t easy. My hands and wrists got really tired, and I had to do it in stages. Here’s a few pics of that process.
Then, I heated up my gas grill. I much prefer the grill because the process smokes a lot, and I’d rather not do that inside.
I adjusted the burners so that, with the lid down, it measured at about 500 degrees. I coated the Dutch ovens in vegetable oil. I normally like to use shortening, like Crisco, but I didn’t have any there. I put the oil in a spritz bottle to get better coverage. Then, I set one of them into the grill, upside down, with the lid separate (also coated). My grill wasn’t big enough to do them both at the same time. I let it bake for about a half hour or so, then (using heavy leather gloves) took it out and spritzed it again. It went back in for another half hour.
The first one, I pulled out to cool. The second one, I just left in the grill and turned off the gas.
Here’s what they look like when the came out:
Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.