The best enameled cast iron Dutch ovens for making stews, braises, and more—no matter your budget.
Our research revealed that the cast iron Dutch oven market falls into three pricing categories: the premium, French-made brands Staub and Le Creuset, which cost $200 or more; mid-tier models in the $100–150 range, usually made in China; and lower-cost brands that come in at under $100, also made in China. More than half of our testing field came from the last category, proving that there is some stiff competition for your Dutch oven dollar.
In the end, the most important attribute of a Dutch oven is how well it cooks food, both on the range and in the oven. Despite what you may have been told, iron is not a great conductor of heat and needs time and a relatively large burner to heat evenly before you can properly sear meat in it. The glossy enamel—while definitely not Teflon—should release stuck-on foods without shredding them to bits.
We then tested heat retention by preheating each lidded pot in the same 350°F oven, then recording the pots' loss of heat in both the walls and the floors using the infrared thermometer. Enamel quality, meanwhile, was difficult to assess. In many cases, failures can occur after many months or years of consistent use—not something we could easily reproduce in our tests. Still, we tried some more extreme abuse trials to see if we could uncover any obvious differences in quality. We banged the pot bottoms together and smacked the insides with a metal measuring cup to see if we could chip the finish.
A larger surface area is critically important since it reduces crowding and allows better, faster, and more efficient searing. In the end, we just couldn't abide pots that skimped on surface area for searing. All our winning models had bottoms that were a minimum of 8 inches in diameter or very close to it.
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