How To Cook The Perfect Steak When Camping

Camping is one of the best ways of discovering and enjoying our beautiful country and can be an exhilarating experience.

When planning a camping trip, it is important to keep in mind the essentials of camping.

These essentials include campfires, which is not only important for heating but also for cooking.

If you are planning to prepare a meal over the campfire during your camping trip, it is important to have enough firewood before setting out.

Alternatively, you can also try to collect firewood from the camping site which can also add some fun to the experience.

Apart from toasting marshmallows, preparing steak over the campfire may be the best way to pass time as well as enjoy a good meal with family and friends.

Preparing the perfect steak requires you to take the following steps:

• Select the right tools
• Select a good steak
• Prepare your steak
• Create a campfire
• Sizzle your steak.

1. Picking The Right Tools

When packing your camping essentials, it is important to include the right tools for preparing the perfect steak.

Once you have sorted out your firewood and fire starter needs, it is important to check if you have a barbeque grill plate, long-handled tongs, steak thermometer and a fire stoker for the coals.

2. Selecting Your Steak

Selecting the best steak is probably the first step when it comes to preparing the perfect steak for your dinner while on a camping trip.

The best cut of meat to cook over a campfire is a thick rib eye fillet on the bone.

The fat content in this cut is ideal for open fire cooking. Marbled meat also gives insurance against overcooking, which is desirable.

Steak with bone is ideal since the bone retains the heat and the steak cooks more evenly.

It is advisable to buy your steak from a bona fide butcher shop, but Coles and Woolies also tend to have good steaks too.

Grass or grain-fed beef would be the tastiest and certainly the best choice if that’s possible.

It is important to refrigerate your beef before embarking on your trip to preserve its flavour.

3. Preparing Your Steak

Preparing your steak includes seasoning it with salt and pepper.

However, you can go exotic and add garlic butter, but that should come later when the steak is almost ready for eating.

Salt sucks the moisture from the steak and it is important to season hours before cooking so that most of the moisture is drawn.

However, it is important to make sure your steaks are taken out of the fridge or esky about an hour before cooking.

The meat should be at room temperature before cooking. This prevents the heat from sizzling the steak’s exterior while trying to warm its interior.

4. Lighting A Campfire

This should be done prior to cooking to give time for the coals to get red-hot. It is important to set apart a section of the fire pit where you place the grill plate.

In this section, you can move the hot coals for the steaks to cook without any contamination from the smoke.

If you are planning to cook directly over the campfire, it is important to note that your choice of wood will affect the flavour of your steak.

Hardwood such as oak, maple, cherry or peach is the best for creating red-hot coals.

You can buy these types of woods as wood chips from a supplier with some diligent internet searching.

Using dry wood produces fire with less smoke and enables the coals to burn hot enough.

5. Sizzling Your Steak

Whenever you have red-hot coals, seasoned beef, and your veggies ready, then you are ready to cook.

The key to preparing the perfect steak is having lots of heat. For even cooking, you can move the steaks around the grill plate using long-handled tongs.

Keep the fire hot by stirring the embers using a fire stoker. Use the steak thermometer to check the temperature of steaks (if you have one).

At 74 deg Celsius, your steaks should be cooked well and you can move them to the cooler side of the grill.

Wait for 10 minutes before you enjoy your steak with your family and friends.

Cooking the perfect steak when camping is dependent on several steps, which need to be followed to end up with a mouthwatering steak.

Selecting the best steak from the butcher shop, carrying the right tools, seasoning your steak, and getting dry wood for your campfire are all instrumental in cooking the perfect steak.

Maintaining the right temperature while cooking your steak is also the key to cooking the perfect steak.

If you are planning on some camping trips, there is no better way to experience this than with the comfort of a caravan.

If you are thinking about buying a caravan, then you can’t go past Retreat Caravans.

Please check out our range of caravans below, all carefully designed with you in mind:

• Whitsunday – Touring caravan
• Keppel – Compact caravan
• Fraser – Semi off-road caravan
• Hamilton – Luxury caravan
• Daydream – Off-road caravan