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"  In the dead of winter, soups, stews, and pot roasts are the foods you want to cook and eat. If you don&amp;#039;t have a cast iron Dutch oven, now&amp;#039;s the time to get one. And as our recent test showed there&amp;#039;s no need to invest in one that costs several hundred bucks. In seventeen colorful cast iron Dutch ovens, we cooked the same hearty beef stew, being careful to weigh the ingredients, cut everything in precise sizes (yes, we use a ruler), and use the exact same brands, down to the salt, and cook on the same burner on the same setting on the same gas range. Guess what? Sometimes we couldn&amp;#039;t believe we prepared the same recipe! The winners simmered up a ragout with tender, melt-in-your mouth meat and vegetables and a thickened, velvety-textured sauce that we couldn&amp;#039;t stop eating. Others gave us tough or stringy beef in fatty, acrid-tasting gravy. In deciding which to recommend to you we also measured how much room each oven offered for browning and how evenly each browned and maintained a simmer. As you&amp;#039;ll have to lift your&amp;#039;s from cabinet to stovetop to the sink and then put it back in the cabinet, we weighed each with its lid on as there&amp;#039;s other ways for you to get a workout. We also put just the covers on the scales..after all, even if your Dutch oven simmers steadily, you&amp;#039;ll have to lift the lid occasionally to stir, season, or sample. Naturally we checked to see how easy it was to get them clean and gave each a wallop against a sink to check for chipping. One of the nice things about these cast iron pots is that they&amp;#039;re attractive enough to bring right from the stove to the table even for company meals, so who wants a chink in the finish? To our surprise, our top picks came from a trio of celebrity chefs--Mario, Wolfgang, and Michy. For the details, check out our article Best Dutch Ovens. Other pots we loved: Cuisinart Chef&amp;#039;s Classic Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven, $105 in your choice of cardinal red or provencal blue and Lodge Color Porcelain Enamel on Cast Iron Dutch Oven, $105 which comes in red, blue, green, pumpkin, and burgundy. Once you&amp;#039;re ready to start braising, here&amp;#039;s some tips we picked up along the way.   To avoid greasy splatters that detract from the beauty of the pot and are a cleaning nightmare, brown meat in a nonstick skillet before you braise it.  Clean enameled cast iron by hand, regardless of what the instructions say, to preserve the luster of its colorful finish.    Add mushrooms and/or pearl onions to stews at the end to maximize their hearty flavors. Quickly saut\u00E9 them, then stir them in for the last 5 minutes.   Perk up a hearty stew with a handful of chopped fresh herbs. Add them right before serving...long cooking kills their flavor. Think beyond parsley...basil, tarragon, or even cilantro add an unexpected accent.   For a bit of zing, simmer a strip of orange peel along with a beef or veal stew. Use a vegetable peeler to remove a swath of rind.   Cut meats and veggies into evenly-sized pieces so no one will bite into a chunk that&amp;#039;s underdone.  Want to learn how we put consumer products to the test and keep you safe? Sign up for a tour of the famous Good Housekeeping Research Institute. If you visit, be sure to say hello when you come by the Kitchen Appliances &amp;amp;amp; Technology Department. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/a23676/best-dutch-oven-secrets/>