Fall Kitchen Upgrades #4: The Red Dutch Oven

Some cookware gets put away when dinner is done. This is the kind you leave on the stove.

Misen’s 7 QT Dutch Oven has a thick cast-iron core wrapped in four layers of enamel, so it holds onto heat for the slow stuff—braises, stews, roasts, beans—without requiring the seasoning routine of bare cast iron.

And then there’s that red enamel.

Glossy, unapologetic, and very ready for a fall table.

The 7-quart size is generous enough for the recipes we actually pull out when the temperature drops: a whole chicken, a serious batch of ragù, Sunday sauce, beef bourguignon, chili, or enough soup to make tomorrow’s lunch somebody else’s problem.

Extra-wide handles make a difference once seven quarts of dinner need to move from stove to oven to table.

And because it’s enameled cast iron, the pot can go straight from a hard stovetop sear into the oven and then directly onto the table.

Which is exactly where that red belongs.

Here’s where it gets clever.

The cast-iron lid flips over and becomes a grill pan. Sear vegetables, toast bread, put grill marks on a steak, then use the Dutch oven underneath for whatever is bubbling away.

There’s also a silicone lid for covering leftovers and sliding the whole pot into the fridge.

Three jobs. One footprint in the cabinet.

A Dutch oven should be a workhorse. This one just happens to clean up very well.

The grill-pan lid is the feature that pushes Misen’s version beyond another pretty piece of enameled cast iron, while the big capacity and serious heat retention make it useful enough to earn the cabinet space.

But we’d probably leave the red one out.