Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Why five stars if the title says "fourteen pounds of grief"? Read on. I got this probably six months ago, and had a moment of laziness. Normally, I'd go ahead and add several more layers of seasoning, even on the pre-seasoned iron. But I didn't this time. Which was ok. The Lodge pre-season isn't perfect, and they don't claim it is. It's just a good head start. Shortly after I got this, my wife and I left my step-daughter house-sitting for the weekend. When we got back, I found my new dutch oven ruined. Apparently, my step-daughter had burned something in it, helpfully grabbed a stainless steel scrubby and some Comet cleaner and tried to scrub out the crunchies. She only succeeded in scrubbing off the seasoning, but not the burned-on stuff. So she threw it in the sink to soak. Yep, pretty much a complete list of things you should not do to cast iron. The bottom four inches of the dutch oven were solid orange rust. My wife took one look at the expression on my face and started hustling her daughter out the front door. I wasn't going to kill her. Honest. Especially when I realized that the five-quart pot was way too big to serve as an urn for her ashes. Instead, I grabbed some sandpaper, took the rust down to bare metal, coated the pan with lard and threw it in the oven. Rinse, lather repeat. And that's the beauty of cast iron. You can't mess it up, and if you do mess it up, you can fix it. My dutch oven is better now than when it was new, and it will only continue to improve. It's forever-ware. Lodge makes a great product, right here in America, and you can't buy better cast iron. I love mine for stews, and for the occasional batch of no-knead bread. Oven, cooktop or charcoal grill, this dutch oven turns out delicious food.