When it comes to cooking up a feast on an open camp fire, it really doesn’t get much better than a reverse seared, monster tomahawk steak (or cattleman’s cutlet). The old expression “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” rings true when it comes to cooking a beautiful cut of meat like a tomahawk steak.
But my all time favourite way to cook them to absolute perfection is the legendry ‘reverse sear’ method using a camp oven and a portable firepit. This means I first cook the steaks in the Bedourie camp oven, then finish them off quickly over hot coals and flames to get that delicious crust on the outside using a portable firepit with a camping grill.

The very first step to cooking a mouthwatering, reverse seared steak using either a camp oven or a portable firepit or both is to take the meat out of your fridge and pat it dry and let it come up to room temperature, then add your seasoning. After you have patted the meat dry, you can now choose to season the steaks with whatever seasoning you like. Some people go all out and chuck every spice known to man onto the steaks, but I prefer to add a good crack of salt and pepper. I also splash the meat with some olive oil before I add the seasoning- this way the seasoning adheres to the meat.

It’s important that you don’t chuck your steaks straight into the camp oven or straight onto the portable firepit– you need to let them sit for at least half an hour (depending on the size of the steak you are cooking) to come up to room/ outside temperature. The reason we do this is to make sure the steak cooks evenly throughout. If you were to take a big cut of meat like a cattleman’s cutlet   straight out of the fridge and threw it either straight into the camp oven or right onto the camping firepit grill, you would rapidly burn the outside and the inside wouldn’t cook evenly.

While your steaks are coming up to room temperature, it’s time to get your coals burning. I’ve always found the best way to go about this is with a Charcoal Starter from Kings. The Kings Charcoal Starters are incredible because they not only get your coals red hot in no time, but they also take up next to no space, so you can fit them just about anywhere. All you need to do to get the coals going using a charcoal starter is pour your charcoal, briquettes or whatever you might be using into the charcoal starter, then chuck a couple of fire starters underneath the charcoal starter and light them up.

Once your charcoal is ready to go, pour it straight into your portable firepit and let it settle. Once your charcoal has settled, grab your camping oven and sit it directly on top of your campfire pit. The way I normally do this is to sit a fire grill on top of the camping fire pit and then sit my camp oven on top of the grill. This way it keeps ash and charcoal out of the oven. Give the bottom of the camp oven a light splash with some oil (including the trivet).

Now we’re cooking! Grab your steaks and place them into the camp oven, then chuck the lid on and place a few extra pieces of charcoal directly onto the lid of your camp oven. This ensures the steaks are getting a relatively even amount of heat on both sides.
Next, we grab a beer, kick back and relax and let the camp oven work its magic.

One handy bit of gear that I never cook steaks without is a temperature probe. These things are super affordable and are a godsend when it comes to getting your steak spot on every single time without fail.

After about 20 minutes, open up the camp oven and check your steaks are cooking evenly. If they need more time, flip them over and swap their positions around. Once your steaks have reached an internal temperature of around 52°C, pull them out and set them aside. We’re now going to get the fire going as hot as we can. Chuck a few handfuls of kindling on and build up the fire that way, then lower the campfire grill  fairly close to the fire, give it a quick wipe with oil and then chuck the steaks straight onto the grill. What we’re going for here is a beautiful bark/ crust on the outside which not only makes the meat look mouth watering, but it makes it taste insanely good too!

We’re going to give the steaks about a minuet or two on each side- remember, we’re not trying to over cook the steaks here. We’re only browning the outside to give it even more flavour.

Once the steaks are cooked to perfection, pull them off your campfire grill, set them on a plate and LET THEM REST! I use capitol letters here to stress the fact that the meat needs to rest to be able absorb the juices and continue cooking on the inside. If you were to cut straight into the steak, all of the juices would spill out and take away all that effort you’ve put in to keep that delicious flavour.

I normally wrap my steaks in tin foil to make sure they don’t cool down too rapidly, then I let them sit for at least 15-20 minuets.

You can serve these steaks up with basically whatever you’d like- but I normally chuck a bit of broccolini on top of the grill while the steaks are resting and maybe a few potatoes wrapped in foil with a bit of garlic butter directly into the hot coals at the beginning of the whole process.

There you go! If campfire cooking is your thing, then you simply cant go wrong following these steps using a camp oven and campfire grill.