Five Amish Dutch Oven Recipes and a Long Dutch Oven Journey

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Wow, I was blown away recently when reader Nana from Ohio shared with me that she is using a Dutch oven that is likely over 150 years old.  Can you imagine that?   She said she enjoys imagining how many meals it has cooked in all those years and the changing cuisine that it has seen.  Let's think about it.  A Dutch Oven that old would have been manufactured around the time of the Civil War.

The Dutch oven was manufactured by Griswold Manufacturing Company in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Meet an 150 year old Amish Dutch Oven

" I cannot truly verify the age of the dutch oven but I am 70 and my mom would have been 96 if living and the piece was her mother's so I think within the range."

Nana lives in Eastern Ohio among Amish farms and within a few hours of Erie.  Nana shared some other fascinating thoughts about her dutch oven:

"I used the piece extensively when my family was all home. Too large now for one little old lady but I still have a sentimental attachment. I like to think back to the meals it has seen and sort of let my imagination wander to maybe different type of meals ie: squirrel and rabbit, and chickens that had to be killed and dressed. My dishes were more along vegetable soups and stews, beans, and pot roasts. In the late seventies and early eighties when utilities began to rise in prices  and I was younger  we did have a wood/coal stove in our basement as an auxiliary heat source and I did cook on it using the dutch oven. It acts like a slow cooker of today's use and I found the lid to be nearly airtight so had qualities of a pressure cooker without the obvious valve. It has a few  interior pit marks which I am assuming came from salted liquids, but don't really know that either,"

Man, I am just blown away by that.   Not all historical pieces move me in that way, but there's something so basic and universal about cooking.  Looking at that dutch oven I can do just what Nana does and picture the various dishes made over the years.  Can any of you out there top a 150 year old dutch oven?

By the way, dutch ovens are popular in Amish kitchens, here are three favorite recipes that call for cooking in a dutch oven.  Obviously, you don't have to use a dutch oven if you don't have one, you could just use a large cooking pot.

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• Amish Golden Chicken Roll Ingredients
• ???? Instructions
• ???? More Amish Dutch Oven Recipes
• ???? Full Recipe

Amish Golden Chicken Roll Ingredients

• 6 chicken breast, skinned, boned, and split
• 12 thin slices of ham
• 12 slices of Swiss cheese
• ½ cup butter melted
• crushed croutons
• Parmesan cheese
  
  Sauce
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 can cream of chicken soup

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???? Instructions

1. Flatten chicken.
2. Place ham and cheese on each.
3. Roll like a jelly roll. 
4. Dip each roll in butter then in crushed croutons and parmesan cheese.
5. Spread layer of sauce in pan and place chicken on top.
6. Use rest of  sauce between chicken pieces.
7. Bake 350 for 40 min. or until brown
8. For the dutch oven, we used chicken tenders in place of breast and we added bacon crumbles with the meat and cheese.

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???? More Amish Dutch Oven Recipes

Amish Beef & Noodle Oven Stew

South Texas Rice

Beef Stew With Dumplings

Cowboy Cake

This recipe came to me from a Mennonite woman in Missouri, but it likely has its origins on the range when it was cooked over an open fire.  The woman left very spare instructions, not sure what "cook until done" means. Moderate oven would be 350.  Maybe use the toothpick test to tell when done?

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???? Full Recipe