Spent $80 on a fancy Dutch oven and my stew turned into charcoal

I finally splurged on a heavy enameled Dutch oven after years of using my grandma's beat up pot. Figured the even heat would fix my burnt bottom problem for good. First batch of beef stew, I got distracted talking to my neighbor through the fence and left it on high for 45 minutes. That thing holds heat like crazy, so by the time I smelled it, the bottom was a solid black crust. Scraped off what I could, but the whole kitchen smelled like a campfire gone wrong. My grandma's old pot never did that to me, maybe because it was thin and I always watched it like a hawk. Has anyone else had a pricey pot betray them worse than the cheap stuff, or is it just my bad timing? The stew itself was tasty on top, but I'm still scrubbing char off the enamel today.

2 comments

2 Comments

karen_roberts422d ago

Laughed out loud reading this because I did almost the exact same thing with my fancy pan last winter. I left chili simmering on medium and went to grab mail, came back 20 minutes later to a solid inch of black death stuck to the bottom. That thing holds heat like a brick oven, it doesn't cool down just because you turn the knob. My old cheap pot would've been fine, it lost heat fast and gave me warning before things got crispy. Now I set a timer on my phone for anything that goes in the Dutch oven, even if I'm just warming soup. The cleanup is brutal too, I spent an hour with baking soda paste and still found black flecks in my dishcloth the next day. You're not alone in this, that charcoal crust is basically a rite of passage for owning one of these things.

the_holly22d ago

Wait, the mail is 20 minutes away from your kitchen? That's insane.