The Most Important Pot In Your Kitchen (and 5 Reasons Why You Need to Upgrade)

Every kitchen needs one good all-purpose pot.

You’ll need it to cook soups, stews, and slow braises made from meat and starches.

You’ll use it for rice and beans, pasta, and boiled veggies.

In fact, if a beginner could have only one piece of cookware to start learning how to cook, it would be a cast-iron enameled Dutch oven.

Wait, a what?

Most cookware sets (think the kind you got when you first started living on your own) come with a standard large nonstick pot, so why fancy it all up and spend money on a higher-end model?

Here are five reasons why upgrading to an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven is so important to building a minimalist kitchen that will allow you to cook anything.

1. It Goes In the Oven (As Well As the Stovetop)

I’m a big fan of items that do more than one thing, and do them well.

That flimsy pot you have might get the job done when you are just cooking on the stovetop, but what if you want to put it in the oven?

Cooking soups, stews, and braises is generally best done in the low, indirect heat found in ovens–rather than the hotter, more localized heat sources on the burner.

This ensures that the dish is being evenly cooked, and reduces the need to stir to prevent scraping.

I generally will heat up the liquid in my Dutch oven on the burner to boiling before putting it into a warm oven to simmer. Or, if it’s a hot summer day, I may just keep cooking on the burner to avoid turning my house into a sauna.

But the el cheapo pots generally have plastic handles, which may or may not be oven safe, but do you really wanna try for yourself?

The Dutch oven does a great job at cooking “liquidy” dishes either in the stove or on it, and is a remarkable multitasker as a result.

2. Once It Gets Hot, It Stays Hot

Cast iron is a beast.

It may take a bit longer to heat up, but hoo-daddy once it’s hot it’s staying hot!

This is especially useful if you are frequently opening the oven door or lifting off the lid, as it’s excellent thermal properties ensure that you won’t stall out your cooking.

Cheapo pots are very sensitive to changes in external temperature, so you might find your cooking to be less consistent if you use them.

3. It Can (and Should) Last For Decades

There’s one main reason why you should by cheap cookware: you are broke and you wouldn’t cook unless you use them.

But cheap cookware isn’t built to last. It’s built to last through college. Or the first few years while you’re living on your own. Then, you can just buy another junky pot and keep continuing this cycle over and over again…

…or you can opt to make a “final purchase” and get something that will last you a long, long time (if not the rest of your life).

You can find a cheap pot for 1/3 the price of an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, but it won’t last 1/3 as long.

Hell, you’ll be lucky to get it to last 1/10 as long!

If you’re in to this whole cooking thing for the long game (which you should be), then it will be ultimately be cheaper to get a cast-iron Dutch oven that lasts for decades than a cheap pot that needs to be replaced every few years.

4. It’s (Mostly) Nonstick

Okay, so I’ve sold you on bypassing the cheap pots you find at Target and Ikea and convinced you to get a cast-iron Dutch oven…

But why spend the extra money for the enameled version when you can get a bare cast-iron version?

Fair question.

First off, it’s really not that much cheaper.

I did some research on Lodge’s models. It’s a bit tricky since they offer different sizes for the enameled and non-enameled versions, but you can extrapolate a “price per volume” value to get an idea of how different they are in price.

Based on the prices given on their website, you can reasonably expect to pay about 20% more for an enameled Dutch oven than for its unenameled sibling.

But…

It so happens that there are two excellent and highly-rated options for enameled cast-iron Dutch ovens that are total deals, and effectively negate the price advantage you’d otherwise see in Dutch ovens. (More on those later in the article.)

But why go with enameled in the first place?

Sure, it looks purdier on the table, if that’s your thang, but the biggest advantage that enameled has over non-enameled is that it has a more non-stick surface.

This is quite important because you’ll be using a Dutch oven for long-cooking soups and stews, where you won’t be stirring nearly as much, and the odds of something getting stuck and causing a mess when you clean up are much higher.

Yes, a well-seasoned cast-iron surface should be pretty non-stick, but it still won’t hold a candle to the slick surface you get from an enameled coating.

The extra price you pay for an enameled surface will more than pay for itself in the time you save not scrubbing away at the surface of a pan with seared chicken stuck to it.

Trust me.

5. It Can Make Bread

Soups, stews, and braises are the obvious most important uses of a large pot, but it doesn’t stop there.

Boiled greens, boiled eggs, poached eggs, and (yes) fried eggs are also best-suited for a large pot as well.

But there’s one hack that, depending on your diet, makes a Dutch oven pure genius.

Baking bread is a notoriously fussy endeavor, involving lots of extra equipment and patience. But if you want to take a more minimalist approach, the Dutch oven is there for you.

It turns out that an enameled Dutch oven is just about perfect for making boules (round bread loaves) due to its ability to retain heat, nonstick surface, and ability to hold in the steam of the baking bread.

The Verdict, and Which One You Should Get

If you have a large cheap pot already and don’t have the money to upgrade, just keep cooking soups, stews, and braises in that baby until you are ready to do so. (Just be prepared to cook everything on the stovetop and spend more time stirring.)

If you don’t have a pot at all, you definitely need one. It’s probably the one most important piece of cookware to have on hand for kitchen newbies due to the relative ease of making dishes that utilize it.

If you don’t have much money to spare (or you aren’t yet 100% sure that you want to learn how to become a dedicated kitchen hacker), then you may still want to opt for the cheapo model.

But if you’ve got the coin, an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven is definitely the way to go.

It cooks better and lasts longer. It’s easier to maintain than its non-enameled bretheren.

It’s a no-brainer.

You want one as close to 6 quarts (6 L) as possible. 5 quarts (5 L) is cheaper but might be a little too small for a true multitasker. 7 quarts (7 L) will let you do more, but at a much steeper price.

You’ll also want to opt for a round one over an oval-shaped one, if for no other reason than you might want to try baking bread in it one day.

The “gold standard” of Dutch ovens has long been Le Creuset (they even call ’em “French ovens,” the fancy-pantses!), but hoo-daddy at what a price!

You can expect to spend at least $275 on a 5 1/2 quart (5 1/2 L) Le Creuset Dutch oven. Sacré Bleu!

But while the Le Creusets do get rave reviews, there are a couple of young upstarts entering the market that consistently get reviewed as being just as good as the LCs, but at a far smaller price point.

First is the 6 quart (6 L) enameled Dutch oven from Lodge. This is the one I personally own. While the list price is currently a still-staggering $118, I have always been able to find them at around $50 on Amazon.

This is a crazy discount, and I don’t know how permanent it is (although it’s been going strong for a long time now), so I suggest that you get on this if you are seriously thinking about getting an enameled Dutch oven right now.

The other great option is a little tricker.

Tramontina sells a 6 1/2 quart (6 1/2 L) Dutch oven for about $50 as well, and it just so happens that it draws even better reviews, but is much harder to track down.

• It appears that these are only available through Walmart. Although these stores are everywhere in the States, it’s still more restrictive than Amazon, or for those of you reading in another country. (To say nothing about whether you want to give more money to them on ethical grounds.)
• Finding them at Walmart is still incredibly difficult. In the months that I have been tracking it, these items have never been available on Walmart’s website. Moreover, they are never in stock at my local Walmarts (and I live in a big city).

The Tramontinas seem to get great reviews, but they are crazy hard to track down in the wild. I’d suggest going with the Lodge Dutch oven and save yourself the insanity. It’s a crazy good product at a ridiculously low price.

A big ol’ pot is one of the most important pieces of cookware a home cook can have, and an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven is undoubtedly the Cadillac of these pots.

If you have a cheap, lightweight nonstick pot, it will do for getting started learning how to cook, but you’ll want to upgrade as soon as you can.