Dutch Oven Learning Blog

Lesson 5 - Cooking in the Dark - Let's Spice it Up!
Learning Experience - Chili on a Cool Night
My instructor canceled classes for this week, so I don't have a post for a lesson reflection.
I decided to try a cooking skill that we covered in our first lesson--Dutch oven chili. I am not a huge chili fan - it's ok, but nothing to "write home about"-- so I never bothered incorporating it into one of my personal learning experience, but without a lesson this week; I figured I might as well go back and give this Dutch oven cooking skill a try. (I should have started with this skill--it's fairly easy!)
To start off, I was proud of myself for remembering something this week that I have not been able to remember in any of my personal learning experiences as of yet -- preheat the Dutch oven. I think I remembered it because every time I mentally reflected back on my Dutch oven cooking experiences this past week; I purposely rehearsed the need to preheat the Dutch oven--it worked, and I finally remembered this step! After the preheat, I fried about a pound of sausage with one minced onion in the Dutch oven. (On one of my previous blogs, I mentioned that bacon grease works as an oil for cooking, so does sausage grease--it's just adds a different flavor to the finished product. Sausage flavored oil made more sense than bacon oil for a chili, so I didn't incorporate bacon into my entree cooking this week.)
I used the Camp Chef stove with the Dutch oven for cooking the sausage and onion, which (as I mentioned last week) I have now assimilated this practice into my cooking on a stove schema--so pretty smooth process here. I then added the rest of the ingredients: garlic, stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, corn, Worcestershire Sauce (Does anyone ever really know how to pronounce this ingredient?), oregano, chili powder, tabasco sauce and red beans. I mixed it all together, removed the Dutch oven from the Camp Chef stove and let it simmer via charcoals. I really could have left it on the Camp Chef stove, but I decided to use the charcoals because I am really trying to learn about temperature control and regulation when cooking with charcoals. (And, charcoals look really neat all light up during the dark hours of the evening.) All in all, this personal learning experience went fairly smoothly. The only hiccup -- tabasco sauce and chili powder combined can set your mouth ablaze! WOW! (Recipe and pictures included below.)
Learning Theory Connections:
So, I definitely saw my preferred strategy of remembering information come into play here - the strategy of rehearsal. As I said before, I forced myself to think about my Dutch oven cooking this past week and every time I reflected on my experiences, I made it a point of telling myself, "Remember, it's just like cooking in an oven (hence the name Dutch oven, right?) you have to preheat before you cook." It worked! I remembered to preheat without my husband having to remind me this week. YEA for the rehearsal strategy! In further reflection, I have wondered why I couldn't remember this need to preheat the Dutch oven until now. I came up with the following reason -- I think I had the script wrong. Prior to Dutch oven cooking, the only outdoor cooking I had done was over a fire. Well, you don't preheat a fire now, do you? But, that was the script I had in memory, so; I'd get ready to cook something outside and just expected there to be an instant heat source like their is with a fire. Well thanks to all of this self-reflection on my learning, as wells as my misunderstanding, I was able to accommodate and assimilate my thinking and behavior about not needing to preheat when cooking outdoors. Now, I have hopefully tuned the script in my schema for outdoor cooking to include the need for preheating depending on the method of cooking. (How's that for metacognition--is that what this learning blog helps us to do, reflect on our learning?)
Anyway, I also noted the ease with which this learning experience progressed - well, I have definitely made chili enough in my life that prior knowledge and episodic memories were a given. The automaticity just rolled forth, and I had to ask my husband for very little help. Of course practicing with the Camp Chef stove and charcoals in prior lessons allowed for my brain to have had a chance to structure or perhaps restructure itself in such a way that this personal learning experience went off without a hitch. (Proof of the neuroscience belief that experiences combined with practice allows for structural changes in the brain in the learning process.)
Recipe:
Taken from The Dutch Oven- Resource- A Comprehensive Guide to Dutch Oven Cooking - with Recipes by Gerry & Chauna Duffin, pg. 66
1 lb. ground beef or pork sausage, 1 onion chopped, 2 garlic cloves - minced, 1 green pepper- chopped, 1 32 oz. can stewed tomatoes, 1 16 oz. can tomato sauce, 1 15&1/4 oz. can whole kernel corn, 5 Tbsp. Worchestershire sauce. 3 tsp. oregano, 4 tsp. chili powder, 1 tsp. Tabasco sauce, 1 32 oz can red beans - drained and rinsed. Use 28 charcoal briquets - distribute evenly on bottom and top of Dutch oven.