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I Forge Iron

New cast iron looking for recipes


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Outside the box means everything is a consideration. The holes in the stove WILL work. 

Dealing with the wife is a whole 'nother issue. You did not mention that detail in the post. (grin) To again go outside the box, use a carriage bolt to drop into the holes when they are not in use. Paint them stove top colors so they blend in.

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This is an example that when you ask a question, you need to give us all the details so we can help solve the problem.

Like Thomas says, You want a vehicle.  So what do you want to haul, the wife in the style SHE wants to travel in, or haul groceries, 10 tons of coal, scrap metal, gravel, etc? Do you want to go slow or at warp speed? Again details that help answer the question. (grin)

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Long legs are a sign it's *meant* to be used cooking over coals and not on a stove---so its a camping model. Something I covet!

Got a steel plate?  Place it on something that won't catch fire  and place the dutch oven on it and build a wood fire nearby and shovel coals over to place under or around the dutch oven as needed to maintain the temp needed.  I'm getting the feeling you are a city fellow...You may need to build a spider for it to suspend it even higher.  A blacksmith can do it easily for you.

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35 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

I'm getting the feeling you are a city fellow...

That hurts Thomas. No I'm not a 'city fellow.' I blame my lack of knowledge of these kinds of things on the not having a father in my life nor a male role model that was able to help me learn as well as a lack of desire to learn when I was younger. 

37 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Got a steel plate?  Place it on something that won't catch fire  and place the dutch oven on it and build a wood fire nearby and shovel coals over to place under or around the dutch oven as needed to maintain the temp needed.

I have a bald spot in the back yard I could build a fire. That's probably what I'll do tomorrow. I also have some old solid brick that I could use to build a fire ring as well as an old grill grate I could use. 

 

41 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

You may need to build a spider for it to suspend it even higher.  A blacksmith can do it easily for you.

I'll look around and see if I can find a blacksmith near here lol. 

I have no idea what I 'spider' is but I'll look and see what it is for future reference. 

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It's something to support a pot over a fire, a variation on a trivett.  I learned my cooking from my mother and grandmother and great grandmothers  mainly by osmosis till I got out on my own and it was cook or starve and I had to eat my mistakes!

I would break this down into "I need to put heat under this pot; how can I do that?  Of course partnering with a person specializing in renaissance cooking.  (She cooks I make the equipment and both me and my wife get fed at a multi day event) helps a lot.  I even get the coals from the beehive bakeoven we build on site to use in my Y1K forge.  I've had peacock and duck cooked over an open fire...The secret of course is controlling the fire: more or less height above it or more or less coals under the pot.  Only time we use burning wood is for boiling a lot of water.

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Mother can't cook. My grandmother I had growing up had recipes that she wrote down and tweaked but never wrote down the changes. It was fine while she was here but now that she's not ... She did try to show me a few things but I didn't pay enough attention. Thankfully my wife is able to cook better than I can but I want to contribute and allow her to take a 'day off' and is not be forced to eat stuff I wouldn't normally feed a dog. Lol 

 

I hope I don't sound as defensive to anyone else as I feel like I sound. I've noticed several times lately that my words are defensive sounding even when there's no reason for it. It's something I'm working on trying to correct. 

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12 minutes ago, Irondragon Forge & Clay said:

You say when you grill it's with gas. Why not use the gas grill with the dutch oven and for heaven sake don't cut the legs off.

I'm not cutting the legs off. I might have a screw (or 7) loose but I'm not going to ruin something like that on purpose. I thought about the gas grill briefly but truth is I wasn't sure how well it would work. 

I actually had a genius idea just now when I went out to smoke (kids don't smoke, it's bad for your health and quitting isn't easy) and I remembered I have a turkey fryer. I need to hook a gas bottle to it and see if it's any good still. If it'll still work I could use it when I'm supposed to use a stovetop. 

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10 hours ago, Irondragon Forge & Clay said:

Necessity is the mother of invention and usually a good solution. Looks like you found a good one, I'll have to remember that one, so much better than my Coleman stove when searing steaks in our cast iron skillet outside so the smoke detectors don't go off.:)

Well I'll let you know if it works out halfway decent. I had to clear the jet on it and probably have to do something else to get it burning right. I messed up and left it setting out in the weather when I moved stuff over from my old shop to my new one and it's gotten a little cruddy. 

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Cooking with solid fuel is very different than cooking with gas or electricity as the fire is almost always increasing or decreasing in heat and you have to "learn" it to get things right.  Most folks start out by getting things too hot as they don't factor in the ramp up time  for the fire and for their cast iron to heat up.  Then at the end they may not factor in the ramp down time.  

One example of dealing with residual heat is that after I cook bacon in my cast iron skillet on my propane kitchen range---I live out in the country, no natural gas!---anyway I will remove the bacon, pour off any excess grease and then turn off the fire and scramble my eggs using the residual heat in my cast iron skillet.  If I'm making a lot of them I will leave the fire on a bit longer and turn it off at the right time---now this differs depending on the skillet. A massively heavy Lodge one has a lot more residual heat in it than a 60 year old "thin" cast iron one does,

Hope you didn't lose too much; but down hearth cooking is an art and you learn by *practice!

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It wasn't too much. An onion, a few carrots, little salt and pepper, about 6 ribs and a few liquid ingridients. I'm a little disappointed but I'm not out of the fight yet. I knew it wouldn't be perfect the first time but definitely hoped for better. 

Thinking about it now I realize I didn't do it right at all. Instead of cooking something I've never cooked before I probably should've done a meal I'm familiar with. Just like I've learned in many other places in life change as few variables as possible to help achieve some measure of success and build from there. I'll try again but next time it'll be something I already know how to cook. Probably a roast chicken. That should be easy enough to have something turn out at least semi edible lol. 

Just for laughs here is a picture. Once you get past the charred spots it's not too terrible. The meat is done so no food poisoning on account of that :) 

IMG_1363.JPG

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Wow my great grandmother taught me that method when I was in single digits and she was in her 90's. I guess they mean "Revolutionary War" when they said revolutionary...

I tend to just use a sponge with a scrubby on the back of it and coarse salt and always heat the pan to drive off any water afterwards.   I'll have to check some of the earlier, well 19th and early 20th centuries) cookbooks and see if they cover that as well.

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Interesting. 

As far as cleaning the pan I learned to get the pan hot ( just above medium on my electric stove) then run it under Hot water in the sink. I use a green scochbrite with the sponge on it but only use the scochbrite side to clean it out then rinse and place back on the stove at a medium heat. Once the water is evaporated I'll wipe it with olive oil or bacon grease and a paper towel. Then it's ready for next time. 

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