If you have never used one, a Dutch oven is a heavy cooking pot – usually made of cast iron but sometimes ceramic – with a tight fitting lid that works well for braising, slow cooking, frying, soups and stews, and baking certain styles of bread. It is a go-to workhorse for many cooking tasks but for our purposes here at Barbell Cooking it comes down to:
BIG TIME MEAL PREP
With a good Dutch oven you can make a lot of food at one time and meal prep yourself into bliss. And Borough Furnace from New York makes a great Dutch oven.
Full Disclosure: This is NOT a paid Ad, nor are we getting any kind of remuneration for this review. We backed a Kickstarter project to help Borough Furnace get their production facility off the ground and chose an Enameled Dutch Oven as the reward. We just really like the product.
A Bit About Borough Furnace
Borough Furnace – a family run business by partners John Truex and Liz Seru – forges cookware in their small Owego, NY factory with fire and scrap iron. They have a background in product design and they engineer (and then RE-engineer) their products to well crafted designs.
From their website: “Our inspiration stems from the deep connection between design, craft and production. Because we are able to machine our own tooling and we make our own castings in house, we prototype our products endlessly – taking them home, cooking with them and making refinements until the details are just perfect.”
For us that means we get high quality products that work really well and are a pleasure to use. As of this writing their Enameled Dutch Oven is the only one of it’s kind made in the USA. It is this locality – they melt, pour, cast, and finish all of their own iron – and the promise of high quality is what attracted us.
Originally Truex had been using a local porcelain glazing company to enamel their ovens, but that company eventually shipped all it’s production overseas and stopped offering their services. To avoid dealing with overseas manufacturing, Truex decided to work with engineers from enamel suppliers and developed a process to do his own custom glazing in house – their Kickstarter campaign helped with the costs.
A Bit on Enameling – or Why it’s Awesome
Enameling is the process of applying a vitreous (glass-like) glaze to the surface of the iron, or more simply put, coating something in porcelain glass.
The first known use of enameling was to make intricate pieces of jewelry sometime in the 3rd millennium BCE. That makes enameling a five thousand year old technology, but it wasn’t applied to cookware until the 17th century.
Enameling an iron pot does have a couple of downsides though. It substantially increases the cost. Chipping of the enamel coating can occur if the pot is dropped, overheated, cleaned recklessly, or cold water is added to a hot pot. And once chipped, the whole pot is unusable.
The benefits far outweigh the downsides however. The fusion of the glaze with the iron prevents rusting and eliminates the need to season the pot. It is a bit easier to clean. Acidic foods (like tomato sauces) can be prepared without fear of weird metallic flavors leaching into them. And people seeking to reduce iron in their diet for health reasons can use them without the worry of iron leaching into the food as well.
Borough Furnace has created a well designed, refined, high quality, USA-made Dutch oven at a price-point that comes in under the top brands like Staub and Le Creuset. That isn’t to say it’s cheap – it isn’t. But we feel the cost is well justified. Before you freak-out over the (current) $280 price tag, let us try to convince you that getting one is worth it, whether you have the means or not.
Why Lay Down $280 Bucks For This Thing?
It is a bit of a capital outlay to be sure, but you will only have to buy this once. If you care for it properly and treat it well, it should last you a lifetime. If you have children they will fight over it once you pass, or you can have it buried with you if you don’t like your kids too well.
Come to think about it.. How Metal would it be to have your remains cremated and then buried IN your Dutch Oven? \m/
Freakin awesome idea… I’ll think on this more.
Big Meal Prep
Having a great enameled Dutch Oven allows you to prepare mounds of protein and vegetables for the week:
- Large Beef, Pork, and Mutton Joints
- Whole Chickens or Turkey Breasts
- Hearty Meat and Veg Stews
- Pottages
- Bottom Rounds for Sandwiches or Salad Additions
- Long Cooked Hearty Tomato Sauces
There are numerous opportunities for meal prep at scale while also keeping the food interesting. This Dutch Oven is a solid workhorse that will serve you well for years to come.
And even if we put all that aside, it just looks great on a shelf. Anyone that walks into your kitchen is going to notice it and it will be a great conversation starter. Just like having great equipment in your gym bag shows your commitment, this oven says “I’m serious about my cooking.” Plus it shows a little sophistication.
Production Runs
We hope you consider picking up one of these Dutch Ovens from Borough Furnace. We must remember though that they are a small partnership and do all the work themselves. As a result they are casting their ovens in small production runs and as of this writing the next run is set to 9/30/21. Once you reserve yours, you will know from which batch your pot is forged.
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~Lift, and Eat Well
\m/
