Your favourite recipes for my new cast iron casserole pot please!

February 22, 2013 3:20 AM

I recently bought a 5 litre casserole dish, which I love, but I'm a bit stuck on what to make with it next.

So far I have just made this stew, which I cooked on a lower heat for longer and the meat was falling apart and wonderful. I especially loved how the fat dissolved into the sauce to make it extra unctuous and delicious. If you have any favourite slow-cooking wonder recipes of your own then I'd love to hear about them. I'm happy to do some prep at the start to make the end results as tasty as possible, so they don't have to be the 'just throw everything in the pot' kind.

I tend to love dishes with lots of flavour and umami, and am happy to incorporate more than one kind of meat, and as much salt and fat as needed. Bonus points for chorizo, which I tend to add to anything that I possibly can. Spicy is good too.

I also read somewhere that you can cook a roast in a big enough casserole pot - is mine right for that? If so, instructions on how to do this and make it taste as great as possible would also be much appreciated.

Caveat - I try to eat quite low carb, so no potatoes, rice, pasta, dumplings etc if possible. That's about it though. Recipe me up!

posted by thegirlmaxtous to food & drink (12 answers total)

Braised oxtail or short ribs. Heat oven to 325F or so. Heat casserole on stovetop. Season meat pieces with salt and pepper, then brown them in a little olive oil. Distribute meat into one layer, pour in enough flavorful liquid (broth, wine) so that the meat is 2/3 submerged. Bring to a boil, then stick it in the oven for three hours or so. Check occasionally, adding liquid if necessary. Somewhere along the line, blanch some vegetables (peeled carrots, onions, celery, in big pieces or even whole). When the meat is done, put the casserole back on the stovetop. Remove meat to a plate for a few minutes while you finish cooking / reheating the vegetables in the remaining liquid. Serve in big bowls, with hunks of meat, a few vegetables, and a ladleful of cooking liquid. If you can stand the carbs, have a thick slice of crusty bread on hand to sop up broth.
posted by jon1270 at 3:38 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

7 hour leg of lamb from the book Bones by Jennifer McLagan (I've also done it with beef).

Outstandingly good, leftovers freeze well and definitely my #1 reason for getting the big pot out.
posted by humph at 3:49 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

remove the plastic handle, put in the oven and make no knead bread. If you're unfamiliar with this, you will be amazed.
posted by ouke at 4:51 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic.

Ina Garten's Brisket - but use about half the quantity in this recipe.

Ina Garten's Perfect Roast Chicken

Pulled pork - put a piece of pork butt into the casserole with a can of cola (not diet, you need the sugar). Cook for 3-4 hours on a low heat. Take the pork out, shred it, put it back with a jar of BBQ sauce and give it another hour.
posted by essexjan at 5:00 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

I strongly, strongly encourage you to check out Molly Steven's book All About Braising. It is chock full of recipes for pans like that.
posted by hungrybruno at 6:20 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

I am currently making a 72-hour beef stock in mine. I make these about once a week, using ox tail and other bones I get from the butcher. I save carrot peelings and other relevant veggie scraps in a bag in the freezer, and use it all for making stock. The stock is then used for gravies, sauces, soups, etc.
posted by Capri at 7:05 AM on February 22

Yes on the chicken!

This is how we do it:

* preheat oven to 450

* quarter a few onions and peel some carrots (cut down so that they fit in the pot); throw them in the bottom

* put chicken in pot; drizzle with olive oil, put some salt & pepper on it

* put lid on pot, put in oven for about an hour

* take off lid, let it roast about 10 minutes more so that it's golden brown

* enjoy!

Shamelessly ripped off from Dorie' Greenspan's blog; When in Doubt, Chicken-in-the-Pot. (Her recipe is more involved but likely tastes more awesome.)
posted by lyra4 at 8:17 AM on February 22

Oxtail Soup - I grate the carrots and chop the celery very, very finely.
Looking for recipes for Maghreb food similar to my own, I stumbled over this article, there is a link to recipes at the end, and I'm definitely going to try several of them. I own a tagine, but if I have many guests, I'll make one dish in the tagine, and another in the casserole.
As he writes in the article, couscous royale is not really a North African dish, but a French adaption. Many places in France, your butcher will prepare it for you, so you just bring the casserole to him. Assuming you don't live in France, this is how I learnt it (though I really like the recipe linked in the article as well): A shoulder of lamb, chopped in to largish bites, a chicken cut into 8 parts, or 4 whole chicken legs separated into drumsticks and upper thighs. Either a pound of spicy Merguez or a pound of very spicy meatballs made from beef, onion, garlic, parsley and harissa. Two large carrots, some other sort of root vegetable (what you can get), two celery sticks, two onions, a courgette, a smallish aubergine, a can of tomatoes or better, a glass of passata, a quart of chicken soup, a can of chick peas. Salt, pepper, thyme, parsley.
Harissa
Couscous
Chop the vegetables into bite-sized (not small bites) chunks. Brown the lamb and chicken in some olive oil. And the onion, celery and root vegetables, stir for a while. Add the courgette and aubergine, stir a little more. Add tomatoes and stock/soup. Bring to a slow simmer, add thyme. Forget the whole thing for an hour or more. See if it's good. Add chickpeas, salt and pepper to taste. Fry the merguez or meatballs, and add them to the stew just before serving with a heavy sprinkling of parsley on top and couscous on the side.
Stir up the harissa with some of the fluid from the stew and leave it to each diner to decide how spicy he/she wants the meal to be.
posted by mumimor at 9:16 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

There are a ton of recipes for how to cook a pot roast in a dutch oven. I can't remember where I found this one, but luckily, I prefer those ultra-simple recipes that I can keep in my head:

1. Find a roast that'll fit. Yours dish looks like mine, which means it'll probably be about 2-4 lbs.

2. Cover the roast in salt and pepper (salt salt salt), then sear on all sides in a little oil.

3. Cut up an entire, big yellow onion and put it in the bottom of the pot with a some fresh garlic. Set the pot roast on top of the onion with two bay leaves (one below the roast, one on top).

4. I can't remember exactly how long I cook it for--I always have to look it up--but I think 3-4 hours at 275 would do the trick.

The onion serves as the only liquid you need. You can play around with other herbs or throw in some vegetables towards the end, but this is really all it takes for it to taste delicious. I usually turn the onion juice/fat mixture into a gravy when the roast is done by making a roux and thickening it up, but the juice by itself is tasty enough on its own.
posted by a.steele at 9:21 AM on February 22

The first thing I made in mine was coq au vin. I love this glazed oxtails recipe.
posted by shoesietart at 2:53 PM on February 22

Homesick Texan Carnitas
posted by illenion at 3:07 PM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Pioneer Woman's Burgundy Mushrooms. Oh my. You have to cook them for nine hours, so although she does it on the stove top, I've always used a cast iron casserole in the oven and I feel like that's more efficient (plus less worry about an open flame).

The main ingredients are butter and wine, which pretty much tells you how awesome they are.
posted by lollusc at 5:17 PM on February 22