How To Use Dutch Oven Liners (and make your own for pennies!)

Making Dutch oven camping recipes is a whole lot more fun when clean-up is fast! When you know how to use Dutch oven liners to make a variety of different foods like soups and stews … cakes and pies … camp cooking and baking is easy!

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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 Dutch oven accessories, including Dutch oven liners, cleanup is a breeze!

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.

Types Of Dutch Oven 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.

Can You Use Foil In A Dutch Oven?

You can use foil in your camp Dutch oven … two different ways.

1. Sheet of aluminum foil
2. Pre-formed pan shaped foil liners

It is easy to just rip a piece of aluminum foil off of 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

We have lots of camping Dutch oven tips and answers to many questions we get frequently including Dutch oven typical sizes and capacities.

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.

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…

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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.

Some pre-formed foil liners come with handles and others are designed without them.

10-Inch Camp Chef Dutch Oven Liners12-Inch Lodge Dutch Oven Liners14-Inch CampLiner Dutch Oven Liners Foil

We can help you if you have ever asked the question, What size Dutch oven should I buy for camping?

Some people don’t like using foil because they think it changes the flavor of foods cooked with it. The nice thing about pre-formed foil is that it works with baked goods as well as liquids like soups, stews and meals with sauces.

Another reason pre-formed aluminum 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.

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.

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, parchment paper is not easily molded to the inside of your oven because it does not hold its shape like foil does.

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.

You can see how I used this method when I made these A-M-A-Z-I-N-G Camping Smores Dutch Oven Brownies!

I also used this method when I made my Dutch Oven Bread.

These Dutch Oven Cinnamon Rolls were really easy to lift out of my oven after I topped them with yummy cream cheese frosting.

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.

How To Make DIY Dutch Oven Liners

1. 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.
2. Tear off a sheet that is 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.
3. Cut 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.
4. 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 get it the way you want it, fold it into a pie shape to make a pattern so you can repeat the process to make as many liners as you need.

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 Dutch Oven 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!

More Recipes

There are so many types of recipes you can make while you are camping.