Ceramic pots

I recently picked up a small ceramic pot cheap.
I used it over a charcoal fire and it worked extremely well.

Anyone else cook using ceramic or clay pots over a fire?

I like cooking with ceramic pots, do a fair bit of it when cooking Japanese style dishes, because they use an excellent one called a donabe. I also have a big redware pot which I use occasionally. All those are used on the stovetop, though, not over the fire. The only one I've used over the fire is a small stoneware pipkin with a hollow handle, no feet. I've used it in the winter when my Buck stove is going, just set it on a bed of coals/ashes, works like a charm. Fun, too.

Spence

Beans seem to come out better when done in a Bean Pot but like the Pipkin they don't seem to do well with the wear and tear of a camp, otherwise I'd probably use them more.

LD

Beans or roast and layered stews. but all in the oven at home.Or does a crock pot count?

We use a Romertopf in the oven fairly often, but that probably doesn't qualify as HC. It does a great job on meats and cooks them relatively quickly at hight temperature. I've not tried it over a fire. I have also heard of people using the cheap ceramic flower pots for bread etc. Again, I've not tried it.

Kansas Jake said:

We use a Romertopf in the oven fairly often, but that probably doesn't qualify as HC.

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I think it does. In "Food in Seventeenth-Century Tidewater Virginia", by Maryellen Spencer, page 170, plate 19, she shows a very early round clay pot with a fitted lid which functions like a Romertopf. She says:

"Earthenware vessels served for baking either in the coals of a fire or in an oven. Pots with lids, comparable to contemporary clay cookers or casseroles, have been found at archaeological sites (see Plate 19)."
https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bits...655.V856_1982.S772.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Spence

They work very well soaked in water for a time before the food is added and then put on in the oven.

Spence, you are probably right in the clay pots being used with lids for many generations. The Romertopf is just a contemporary design.

Bean pots, my grandmas recipe said boil the beans for 2 hours. I put them in the bean pot and commenced to boil 1/2 hour later the bean pot broke in 1/2 over the gas burner shutting off the fire filling the kitchen in gas. It was a wonder the house did not explode!!!!

3 hour clean up later my DW and I was at grams, she said idiot use an iron pot to boil the frigging bean pot will shatter and spill all contents on the burner.

This was in ancient 1970's when first married. Nana was from Eastport ME [Passamaquoddy res] and knew about beans she just left out the practical advise.

She did get to hold my son at 3 months old a month before she passed.

Bean pots are meant for the oven.

No one ever told a new married couple of 17 year olds that!!!!

It would have been nice to know same as other things we had truly no idea of. Damn it was a different time and some times knowledge is good.

Passamaquoddy res? Now you are in my home town!
:shocked2:

Ahh, to be 17 again.....There's a thought to ponder. :hmm:

Great story. Most of us have made those kind of mistakes at one time or another.

nhmoose said:

She did get to hold my son at 3 months old a month before she passed.

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Now there's a memory that's worth more than any pot of beans on the coldest day that ever was.

Thanks. :hatsoff:

Richard/Grumpa

I've been cooking fulltime for the last 6 yrs and have used cast iron Dutch ovens, Lodge enamelized porcelain cast iron Dutch ovens and various stainless steel pots and haven't noticed a difference in the taste of the food. So....am wondering if "romanticism" or a love of history is embellishing the taste of the food prepared in historical cooking vessels. The mind can play tricks.

Cooking over a wood fire can introduce flavors not possible w/ a modern range, but then again, is the "smoke" taste substituted for the taste of food cooked in cast iron...if there even is such a taste.

I use my "heavy", cast iron pots for their even heating qualities, suitably large sizes and fairly easy cleanup, but don't attribute a "better taste" in using them......my Lodge enamelized, porcelain cast iron Dutch oven is mainly used because of its 8 qt capacity, but the food tastes the same as that from my 6 qt cast iron Dutch oven. Perhaps in my old age, my taste buds are worn out, but I truly still enjoy good tasting food and red wine.

Ceramic pots because of their fragility don't interest me and I suspect that they're not easy to clean...and don't think they impart any taste into the food that's cooking in them unless they previously weren't cleaned properly.....Fred

You've got to boil dried red beans for a couple of hours just to kill the stomach-cramping characteristic in them. I guess you could then transfer the beans from an iron pot to clay and then put them in the oven.

White beans, don't apply.

flehto said:

I suspect that they're not easy to clean

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Fred, So far from what I've experienced with the few clay/ceramic pots that I have, They clean very easily.

Others may have different experiences.

Gene this isn't a bean cooking topic it's a ceramic pot topic....I do have a bean pot topic somewhere.....

Colorado Clyde said:

Bean pots are meant for the oven.

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Is this the one you're referring to for which you rebuked me?

I've never had a problem cleaning clay pots.

I agree with Fred, cooking in clay doesn't add any special flavor. There's a big difference in flavor, texture and other things depending on the method of cooking, though, boiling, baking, broiling, frying, etc., and the different types of pots can make that happen better or worse. There's something special about chicken baked in a clay Romertopf as compared to baking it uncovered in a roasting pan.

Ceramic pots work great for baked beans, as most would agree, but they aren't required. I saw this molded into the bottom of an old cast iron Dutch oven:

"Baked Beans

1 table spoon mustard
2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup syrup
1/2 cup sugar
2 lbs beans
1 lb pork
4 onions"

Spence