Ten Pots & Sauces Brought to Life in a Deep Cast Iron Vessel

When I brought home my first deep dish cast iron pan, and then later a Dutch oven, my imagination struggled to know how to make use of these massive cooking tools apart from my intended recipe.

I wanted to cook a batch of chili, and I did, but the more I cooked the more I came to rely on big pots to not only make big delicious meals, but simpler things too, like sauces, dips and liquid-heavy recipes.

1. Bolognese. Don’t fear the tomato as you simmer a classic sauce in your cast iron cookware… just make sure you wipe down your cocotte before your dive in for seconds.

2. Alfredo. This widely adored pasta sauce is easier to make than you might imagine, and mixing up a batch in a big cast iron pot means you can add your cooked pasta right into the sauce, stir it up and serve.

3. Gravy. Don’t toss those drippings, and instead add some spice and a thickener to mix up a gravy to go along with your main.

4. Nacho Cheese. Hot and gooey, a blend of cheeses melted together with a bit of chili and spice can lead to an entire cast iron tub of tasty for pouring over or dunking corn chips.

5. Chili. Those afternoon-long slow simmers of a batch of meats, veggies sauces and spices were one of the reasons I bought a Dutch oven in the first place.

6. Soup. Sure, almost any deep pot will cook up a great soup, but a thick-walled cast iron pot like a Dutch oven will make sure even and thorough heating.

7. Stew. Benefiting immeasurably by first browning your meat cubes in a hot cast iron pan, why swap cooking vessels when you can then just add the rest of your potatoes, veggies, spices and stock and make a great stew without losing any flavour at all.

8. Hot Dip. Ground beef, onions, spices and hot cheeses are among the minglers in this one-pot sauce that is amazing with tortilla chips and served right from a cast iron pot where it was cooked.

9. Joes. Sloppy or not, this big pot of flavoured meat was meant to be squeeze into a bun or served on a dish, makes for a great meal or a simple pot-luck delight that will stay warm and tasty in a cast iron pot.

10. Caramel. Not every sauce is savory, and cast iron can be a great tool to caramelize sugar and butter into amazing sauces for ice cream, cakes, or other dessert finishes for your meal.

People like lists. I like people. So I’m giving the people what they like. I ran a blog for 16 years and one of the most popular posts ever on that blog was a list of “100 things” that I’d compiled and posted. I’m trying to recreate something similar over the next couple months for the cast iron guy blog. This post will eventually form part of that mega list.

Creative Cooking: Rolling & Wrapping

Yesterday I wrote about my philosophy of hacking the grilled cheese sandwich: that it was part of an effort  to learn to fix (or improve a recipe) by taking it apart, breaking it, and trying to make it better. Hacking it.

Not everyone thinks about food that way, however. So I thought I’d start a simple (probably irregular) series of inspirations for how readers can do their own creative cooking.

Today? Food wrapped or stuffed or rolled into other foods. Think of the list below as a recipe prompt or the seed of a bigger idea from which you can cook something interesting. Start with a prompt, add your own spices, garnish, and cook style. And make some notes about what you’ve just created!

Now don’t overthink it. Hack that recipe.

Meats up.

A bit of chicken or steak, wrapped in ham or prosciutto.

Floured chicken slices wrapped around some spicy chorizo or other sausage.

A marinated beef strip twisted around a different kind of marinated beef strip.

Fish, fileted or whole, wrapped in bacon.

Get cheesy.

Roll thin slices of spiced chicken breast around a soft cheese before baking.

Stuff homemade burger patties with chunks of cheddar and swiss before grilling.

Shred salty parmesan into ground sausage and cast iron grill into breakfast rounds.

Baked potato halves double cooked with cheddar and some kind of smoked meat.

Veggie Out.

Peppers cored and stuffed with spiced ground beef bake savory single servings.

Fish stuffed with nuts, peppers, onions, mushrooms or even citrus fruit.

Eggplants stuffed with crumbled meats and spices are a creative cook’s dream.

Big or small mushroom caps are perfect baking receptacles for a variety of fillings.

Comment or tag me on social media with your creative cooking creation. If you send a picture and a recipe, I'll happily feature you with credit in a future post! #CreativeCooking

Happy Things

Compared to this time
last year are you
happier or sadder?

the scent of freshly baked bread
crisp autumn leaves cracking underfoot
cuddles from an energetic dog
grilled meat over an open fire
fresh snowflakes reflected in my run light
churning my own ice cream
a freshly seasoned cast iron pan
saturn aglow in the evening sky
vaccinations
beers shared with coworkers in the backyard
runs through the rolling wilderness
airline tickets
looking across the mountains after a long climb
watching the construction of a new ice rink
games played with friends
completed projects at work
watercolour paints on coarse paper
a new leaf appearing on a houseplant
hugs from my daughter
text messages from old friends
freshly waxed cross country skis
spicy mustard
words shared on a not-so-new-anymore blog

Thirty one topics. Thirty one posts. Not exactly a list… but close. In December I like to look back on the year that was. My daily posts in December-ish are themed-ish and may contain spoilers set against the backdrop of some year-end-ish personal exposition.

Backyard: Saturday (or, a list of rejected backyard blog topics)

In recognition of yet-another-local-lockdown due to the ongoing pandemic, I'm doing a week of feature blog posts about living in the backyard. From May 10th through 16th, my posts will be themed around life outdoors but as close to home as possible, a few steps out the back door.

After nearly a week of deeper restrictions that have left me (and most law-abiding residents of the city) without many places to go, I’ve turned that into an opportunity to enjoy my own backyard. Think of it less like a lockdown, and more like permission to do nothing but enjoy my own grass, trees, garden, and relaxing spaces.

If you’ve been following along for the week, I’ve posted a short list of reflective blog posts that haven’t done much for my Google search ranking, but certainly have helped me get a few things pried loose from my own brain.

Given another couple weeks, maybe I’d have stooped to writing about even more trivial topics, like these rejected titles and not-so-interesting daily blog ideas:

Backyard: Naps

Wherein I chronicled the joy of falling asleep on my new, hand-built patio couch under the shade of the pergola sail fluttering in the wind. It’s tough to see how I would have turned that into more than about a hundred words without a serious thesaurus.

Backyard: Chores

Having spent my Saturday morning tilling the garden, planting the potatoes, and dealing with even more weeds (gah!) this rejected blog post risked turning into a long list of all the things I need to get done, y’know, instead of writing blog posts.

Backyard: Chronology

As it turns out this idea was really only of interest to me as I sorted through fifteen years of photos of my own backyard and marvelled at how much my trees had grown since I’d planted them. Breaking news: trees grow!

Backyard: Music

As at least one of my neighbours always seems to be playing music, the distant and indistinct muffled tones of random streaming playlists wafts through the air. My music knowledge is average though, so guessing what songs were playing could have been an amusing blog game.

Backyard: Garbage

Imagine my slow-motion, hand-typed embarassment in reading a blog post listing all the weird objects my eight-month-old puppy has found in my I-thought-I-had-a-clean-yard backyard. A scandalous post idea, and obviously rejected. Photos redacted.

Backyard: Terrible Ideas

A tongue-in-cheek list of some deliberately bad blog ideas, loosely acknowledging the author’s commentary on how difficult it is to make writing about his own backyard interesting and how easy it would have been to veer that metaphorical wheelbarrow into a fence post …oh, wait.