When I was younger, the world seemed to move with much more patience and purpose. There were very few times as I recall, when I felt hurried, either with my thoughts or my activities. Summer days seemed to last far more than their allotted twenty-four hours, and even the short days of winter were capped off with long evenings by the fireplace, sitting and discussing the events of the day, or at least listening to the old folks do so, while warm smells emanated from the kitchen. Microwaves were non-existent, as were most modern crockpots and slow cookers. If you wanted your meal to take its own sweet time reaching perfection, the only real tool in your kitchen toolbox was a good, old-fashioned, cast iron, dutch oven. They worked wonders.

Growing up with a father who was older than most when I was born, my formative years were forged with old-school habits and little nuances. Gravy was “soppins”, the words “ain’t”, and “y’aint”, as in “y’all ain’t” were commonly spoken by my pop and granddad. Cast-iron was king. Meals were events, not just something you threw together to get you by until you were running off somewhere. When the extended family got together, there often were only two meals a day, and each took substantial time to prepare. In the morning, there would be a large breakfast full of now-taboo items such as bacon and eggs, cooked in lard or old bacon grease, toast cooked in the cast iron from the left over bacon, with little bits gripping the toast edges like mountain climbers clinging to the smallest crevace, and biscuits, handmade, slow-cooked in the large, black as night, dutch oven. To make the biscuits perfect, the designated family cook would very often crisp a few rashers of bacon in the cast iron to coat it proper, before adding the dough. The combination was magical. If you’ve never had a bacon-infused proper old-school biscuit, you haven’t lived.

The later meal, usually in late afternoon early evening, also required much preparation that started hours before the sit-down time was to be had. Cuts of venison needed be cubed, quartered, or thin-sliced, laid over a bed of onions and garlic, and slow cooked in the dutch oven with just enough corn starch and broth to coat it all in a great bed of soppins. There was dough to be made and set to rise, many times steelhead trout to be cleaned, skillet-fried, and lightly salted, and fresh greens to be chopped. Often there was also a run to my grandpa’s workshed, where he had a small, and very much illegal, pot still. You can take the man out of the hills, as they say, but the man and the hills are not easily parted.

As a boy he would have me run down with a mason jar, and would instruct me to return with it precisely half-filled, as he would then cut it with store-bought whiskey, for the men to enjoy after dinner on the back porch. My grandma also shared a glass more than once. She could hold her own with any man. Some might frown, but I don’t care. There was always more than whiskey in the glass. After a few hours of preparation and talking, the dutch ovens with the venison and biscuits would be put on the plank wooden table, outdoors when weather permitted, and we would all sit on the porch and eat and talk until we could barely keep our eyes open. Until much later, there was never a television on and since it was a party line, no one got the phone unless they were expecting a call. Good times. Times not to be had in the microwave, fast-food, pre-prepared coated chicken in a bag world, we live in now.

Recently, my son-in-law was at my house and said he had looked up a great sour dough bread recipe on his smart phone, and wanted to give it a try. Not the typical bread introduction path, but the new ways and gadgets have their place it seems and if it leads to fresh bread in the house, who am I to argue? However, looking dejected, he said that a cast-iron dutch oven was needed for the recipe, and he didn’t know where he could get his hands on one to give it a try. Silly boy. I headed down to my basement stores shelf, and promptly came back up with my grandfather’s old one that I have kept, and quite often used, since his passing. We ran a damp cloth to get the dust out, coated it with oil and heated it a bit to get it ready and temper it, and he began to get to it. He was a little unsure of timing and measurements for ingredients, but that’s the beauty of a dutch oven. Things cook slow, with that warm iron heat on all sides to temper and meld the contents. It’s quite forgiving. Rarely has anything not delicious ever emerged from such a trusty old hunk of iron, and this was no different. The bread was perfect. Warmed throughout, even in the middle, and the butter melted like ice in sunshine. Afterwards, his family bought a more modern dutch oven for my daughter, and both she and my son in law have now used their new acquisition several times for more great food projects. The mood in the house lifts with each warming. Its not cast iron, but it does the trick and if it gets the new generation on board with the old ways, I’ll not stand in the way.

Old cast iron dutch ovens are not something that are used very often. Most folks don’t have the patience, and, more importantly, the knowledge of all that they can do when maintained and used properly. But they are the perfect cooking companion when you want to slow the house down, fill it with comforting smells, and enjoy a well-prepared family meal at the end of a long day or week. When properly used, family conversation usually flows effortlessly. But if it needs a kick-start, a half-jar of corn whiskey is highly recommended.

(c) copyright 2021 by D. James Clark – all rights reserved.