If you know how to make Dutch oven parchment paper liners and you use them to make different foods like cakes, pies, breads and even meatloaf. Then, it’s really easy to clean your cooking equipment after your meal. Making Dutch oven camping recipes is a whole lot more fun when clean-up is fast!
Watch How To Make DIY Dutch Oven Liners
If you want to save a little cash, you can make your own DIY parchment paper Dutch oven liners! You’ll find the printable instructions at the bottom of this post.
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Here’s how you do it.
- Get a roll of parchment paper. Ideally, you’d like to have a 20 inch diameter circle when you’re finished cutting the paper but 12 inch wide & 15 inch wide paper is more readily available.
- Tear off a sheet that is about 20 inches long. Tip: If you are using paper that is less than 20 inches wide, make sure you are cutting the length to be 20 inches so you have enough paper to run up the sides of your oven. When the paper is folded into the oven, the paper bunches together so the longer parts do cover some of the shorter parts. In this case, your final shape will be closer to an oval than a circle.
- Lay the sheet on a flat surface. You’re going to fold it 4 times.
- Fold #1: In half creating a rectangle
- Fold #2 In half creating a rectangle
- Fold #3 In half beginning to create a triangle
- Fold #4 In half creating a triangle
- Place the point of the folded paper in the center inside the bottom of the Dutch oven.
- Use your hand to flatten the paper against the bottom and up the wall of the oven.
- Use scissors to cut the excess paper. You are actually going to be cutting the paper into a circular shape that is large enough to cover the floor and at least 3/4 of the way up the inside walls of your Dutch oven.
- I actually like mine a little larger so some paper hangs over the edge of the oven and beyond the lid. That way I can use the exposed paper as “handles” to remove hot food from the hot oven to cool.
- Unfold the paper.
- Place the cut paper into your Dutch oven and form it around, pressing the paper along the bottom and up the sides. You want to create a crease in the paper around the edge where the bottom of the oven meets the wall. Then, see how it fits.
- When you confirm the first paper fits the oven, fold it back into the triangle pie shape. You’re going to use it to make a pattern so you can repeat the process to make as many liners as you need.
- You will do the 4 folds on each piece of parchment, then use the pattern so you are trimming the correct amount from each piece of paper.
How To Use Liners
Cold oven
I find it best to place a liner in a cold Dutch oven because it is easier to handle the cookware without getting burned. Then, I just proceed with the recipe instructions, as usual.
Pre-heated oven
There are some instances when I pre-heat the oven before placing the liner inside. Here are some instances when that is helpful:
- Dough-based crust: When you are baking recipes that have a crust, like pizza, it can be easier to form the dough directly on a parchment paper liner that is flat on the table, then just lift it by the edges of the paper (I call these “handles”) and lower the dough into your pre-heated Dutch oven. This technique is similar to forming dough and building the layers of toppings on a pizza peel that you use to transfer the pizza to a hot oven for baking.
- Loaf of bread: I like forming my bread dough while it is sitting on a flat surface. I lay a parchment paper liner on a table, form the dough, then I just lift the edges of the paper and use the “handles” to lower the dough into a pre-heated oven.
Why Use Liners In Your Cast Iron Dutch Oven?
One pot camping meals are great when you want simple food. Dutch oven cooking is one of the most popular ways to cook while camping and if you use these awesome liners, just like all Dutch oven accessories, they make the process easier.
- Dutch oven liners, make cleanup a breeze!
- Liners can also prevent pungent odors and flavors from penetrating your cookware.
Reduce Clean-Up & Lift Items Out Of Your Oven
One of our favorite camp cooking tips and tricks is to reduce or possibly eliminate the need for cleaning your Dutch oven by using liners. Disposable aluminum liners come in pre-formed sizes and work with standard oven sizes so you need to get the appropriate size to fit your oven.
A disposable aluminum liner keeps your Dutch oven clean while both parchment and foil liners easily lift baked goods out of your oven like our Dutch Oven Berry Cobbler.
Different Types Of Liners
There are so many things to learn about how to use a Dutch oven while camping, here we are focusing solely on the use of liners.
Re-Usable vs. Disposable
Some cast iron Dutch oven liners are intended to be single use while others are designed to be used many times.
Silicone Dutch Oven Liners
Re-usable liners are made from silicone and are just like any other piece of cooking equipment that you set inside your oven. As far as I have been able to determine, these are no longer available. I think partially because when campers want to use a liner, one of the main reasons they are using it is to avoid having to clean a pot, whether it be cast iron or silicone.
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Can You Use Foil In A Dutch Oven?
You can use foil in your camp Dutch oven … two different ways.
- Sheet of aluminum foil
- Pre-formed pan shaped foil liners
It is easy to just rip a piece of aluminum foil off your roll and form it around the inside of your Dutch oven to line the bottom and the walls of your oven. Alternatively, you can use pre-formed foil liners. This is the easiest type of liner for baked goods.
Pre-Formed Foil Dutch Oven Liners
Liners made from a heavy duty aluminum foil are designed to be single-use but they are sturdy enough to be cleaned and used multiple times as well as recycled. We have lots of camping Dutch oven tips and answers to many questions we get frequently including Dutch oven typical sizes and capacities.
It is important that you get the right size. You can use 12 inch Dutch oven liners in any size oven that is a 12” or larger oven. Likewise, you can use 10 inch Dutch oven liners in any size oven that is a 10” or larger oven. And so on.
- Contrarily, you CAN’T fit a 12-inch foil liner in a 10-inch Dutch oven. In other words, as long as the oven is larger than the aluminum foil Dutch oven liners you are putting inside, you are good to go.
Another reason pre-formed aluminium foil liners are great is for cooking acidic foods, like tomato-based sauces, because the food’s acid wears away the seasoning layer on the cookware. More on this later.
Cupcake Foil Liners
If you want to make individual servings of baked goods, instead of using one large Dutch oven liner you can use several cupcake foil liners like we did when we made our Chocolate Lava Dutch Oven Cakes.
Don’t expect uniform shapes
The foil cupcake liners are not heavy duty so, as you can see, the cakes form slightly irregular shapes and they need to fill the bottom of the oven because they “hold each other in place” as they bake.
Can I Use Parchment Paper In A Dutch Oven?
There are two different ways you can use parchment paper in your camp Dutch oven.
- Make your own liners from a roll of paper
- Use pre-cut liners
Just as you do with aluminum foil, you can get a roll of parchment paper and tear off the amount you need to line your Dutch oven.
- Unlike aluminum foil, a piece of parchment paper is not easily molded to the inside of your oven because it does not hold its shape like foil does.
Measure, shape and cut
When lining your oven with a sheet of parchment paper, place it in your Dutch oven and do your best to shape it to fit along the bottom and up the sides of the oven, then, fold over the excess paper or cut if off.
Alternatively, you can use pre-cut parchment paper liners.
Pre-Cut Parchment Paper Dutch Oven Liners
Unlike foil liners, parchment liners are not good for cooking meals with liquids. You’ll love using parchment liners when you make Dutch Oven Baked Goods like cakes, pies and breads.
The really nice thing about pre-cut parchment liners (as opposed to pre-formed foil liners) is the fact that size is not critical. These are universal 20-inch diameter parchment paper liners.
If you want to bake with your oven during a time of fire restrictions, you can just use a dome. Never done it? Learn how to cook with a Dutch oven dome and heat diffuser plate on a propane stove instead of using campfire coals or charcoal briquettes as your heat source.
Can You Use Wax Paper In A Dutch Oven?
You should never use wax paper in your Dutch oven because it is not heat resistant. At high temperatures, the wax will actually melt.
Drawbacks To Using Liners
As you can see, Dutch oven liners have lots of benefits but you would not want to use them all the time. Why? Because proper cleaning and seasoning cast iron Dutch oven cookware is good for it.
- You actually want to build up the seasoned surface on cast iron Dutch ovens and skillets to produce a slick non-sticking surface. How does that work?
- When you cook directly in the cast iron pan with fat and oil, you build up a protective layer that bonds with the iron nearly creating a non-stick surface that gets even better over time.
- So, as much as you might love using Dutch oven liners, you don’t want to cook with them exclusively.
Managing the temperature of your Dutch oven out in the elements can be a challenge. Get our simple tips for Dutch Oven Temperature Control!
Printable Instructions
How To Make Dutch Oven Parchment Paper Liners
It’s easy to make liners for your camp oven using a roll of parchment paper.
Yield: 30 liners (see note #2)
-
Get a roll of parchment paper. Ideally, you’d like to have a 20 inch diameter circle when you’re finished cutting the paper but 12 inch wide & 15 inch wide paper is more readily available.
-
Tear off a sheet that is about 20 inches long. See note #3.
-
Lay the sheet on a flat surface. You’re going to fold it 4 times.
-
Fold #1: In half creating a rectangle
-
Fold #2 In half creating a rectangle
-
Fold #3 In half beginning to create a triangle
-
Fold #4 In half creating a triangle
-
Place the point of the folded paper in the center inside the bottom of the Dutch oven.
-
Use your hand to flatten the paper against the bottom and up the wall of the oven.
-
Use scissors to cut the excess paper. You are actually going to be cutting the paper into a circular shape that is large enough to cover the floor and at least 3/4 of the way up the inside walls of your Dutch oven.
-
I actually like mine a little larger so some paper hangs over the edge of the oven and beyond the lid. That way I can use the exposed paper as “handles” to remove hot food from the hot oven to cool.
-
Unfold the paper.
-
Place the cut paper into your Dutch oven and form it around, pressing the paper along the bottom and up the sides. You want to create a crease in the paper around the edge where the bottom of the oven meets the wall. Then, see how it fits.
-
When you confirm the first paper fits the oven, fold it back into the triangle pie shape. You’re going to use it to make a pattern so you can repeat the process to make as many liners as you need.
-
You will do the 4 folds on each piece of parchment, then use the pattern so you are trimming the correct amount from each piece of paper.
- A roll of 20-inch wide paper is ideal but 15-inch paper works well too.
- If the roll is 50 feet long, you will yield about 30 liners.
- If you are using paper that is less than 20 inches wide, make sure you are cutting the length to be 20 inches so you have enough paper to run up the sides of your oven. When the paper is folded into the oven, the paper bunches together so the longer parts do cover some of the shorter parts. In this case, your final shape will be closer to an oval than a circle.
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