It's important to clean your Dutch oven and put it up right, but it doesn't take very long or a lot of effort to do it right. Here's a quick little video to show you what I mean.
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First, let's define what we mean by clean. When using a black cast iron dutch oven the “coating” on the cast iron cooking surface is called “seasoning”. It's usually applied by soaking oil into the cast iron, and bacon grease is one of my favorite things to use.
So once you season a cast iron Dutch oven it's a good idea not to wash it again with soap and water. If it's dirty enough for some reason, then you can do it, but if you wash it then it needs to be re-seasoned. This protects the cast iron from rusting and provides a new cooking surface.
Most things you cook in your Dutch oven will cook at over 300 degrees. This means that those nasty little germs will be killed by temperature, so that's why we can season it with bacon grease and then cook in it again several days later.
Most cleaning on a black cast iron surface will be to get off the cooked on build up that loads up on the inside cooking surface. This is best scraped off, and a wooden spoon works best for tough stuff. Wooden spoons are cheap if you ruin it and they won't scratch the cast iron surface.
Some people clean cast iron with granular salt, which works well but will need rinsed off. If left on the surface it can really canker the metal.
Enamel coated cast iron can be washed like other dishes, just get it good and dry before putting it up for storage. Pyrex can go in the dishwasher, as well as stainless and aluminum.
Cleaning cast iron is one of the things that scare people the most about using Dutch ovens. Just remember, it's a cast iron pot – pretty tough. You could probably run over it with a truck and it would still work OK. Rust is the big culprit, and that can be controlled by checking it often and applying vegetable oil occasionally.
