The green pot that lives on the stove now
Sunday afternoons here have a sound, and the sound is a lid. A heavy one, settling onto a heavy pot, with something inside that will not be ready for three hours and does not need me in the meantime. I go and live my life. The pot does its work. We reconvene at dinner.
The pot is an Amazon Basics enameled cast iron Dutch oven, the big 7.3 quart one, in green. I bought it after a long, silly deliberation over the famous French kind, the one that costs as much as a flight. I do product margins for a living. I knew exactly what I was paying for with the famous one, and one Sunday I decided not to.
What the Heavy Lid Buys You
Cast iron under enamel, so it holds heat evenly and forgives you for walking away. Oven safe to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Big enough for a stew that feeds six, or four people twice, which is how stew is meant to work. The lid sits snug; one reviewer who braises seriously pointed out how little evaporation escapes during a long cook, and that snugness is exactly what you are paying famous brands for.
People bake sourdough in it. People make phở stock in it, though the reviews do not say so; that one is mine. After months of Sundays, the enamel inside ours has kept its surface, and nothing has stuck badly enough to be remembered.
Be honest with yourself about the weight. Full, this pot is a two-hands, mind-your-back object. And the enamel wants hand washing, warm water, no metal spoons. It is not fussy, but it is not invincible either.
The Permanent Resident
One reviewer confessed to choosing a Dutch oven deliberately too big for the cupboard so it would have to live on the stove forever. I did not plan this, but it happened anyway. The green pot is on the stove as I write this. It has become part of what the kitchen looks like, the way a kettle is.
Macca calls it the soup house. Things go in, the lid comes down, and soup lives there until evening. I have heard worse descriptions of comfort.
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