Funny coincidence: I got home from work yesterday, sat down on the couch, and heard my wife yell from the kitchen, “Honey, where’s my Dutch oven?”
Yes, I laughed :D.
I don’t know what I’d do without my baked enamel 22 cm Le Creuset dutch oven . I’ve been using it almost daily for the 14 years I’ve had it. I boil pasta in it. It makes a great pan-fried steak. It’s indispensable for making risottos. I can roast a small chicken, or cornish hens in it. I bake casseroles of all kinds in it. It’s excellent for making spanish rice, where you brown the rice in oil first, then add your broth, veggies & spices, and cover & simmer. It’s definitely my Mac & Cheese making pot. My only regret is I don’t have two.
I got mine with the steamer that fits on top of the pot, and the pot’s lid fits on top of that. It’s great for steaming things along with whatever main dish you’re cooking. Or, if you’re making something that would require an herb faggot, you can just dump your herbs in the steamer and let that herbal goodness drip down into your dish.
I don’t own an electric stock pot, but I do have some large stock pots for when I’m making large soups/stews, or boiling lots of potatoes/pasta, but my dutch oven still gets far more use. Pasta doesn’t stick to the bottom of my dutch oven they way it does in metal stock pots.
For roasting larger chickens, I have those glass/pyrex baking dishes, which work great. For a large turkey or something, I’d probably just use one of those disposable foil type pans. You don’t have to worry about clean up, or finding a place to store it.
My $.02.
I’d go for the Dutch Oven as well. You can roast in a pan as long as you take steps to get even constant heat.
One thing I learned from Alton Brown which has worked so well is to get a clay flower pot that a chicken will fit underneath. Place it in the oven and set the oven to the highest temp or do a self clean cycle. Then set your roasting temp, put the chicken under the red hot clay and you will have an incredibly moist and delicious bird with a great browned and crisp exterior. The steady heat radiation given off from the pot does the trick.
We have both. The roasting pan gets used about 4 times a year (six if we make chex mix a couple of times), and the dutch oven almost never. They seem to mostly exist to take up space. Unlike the crock pot and the glass/ceramic cookware sets, which are more size appropriate for most meals.