We love nothing more than to cook our meals over an open fire when we are camping. It’s almost as fun as roasting a marshmallow or watching my kids burn theirs, lol. There is something spectacular about being outside in nature and cooking a delicious meal, especially a steak. Campfire steaks can really make a camping trip great!
To cook the perfect campfire steak, you need two things:
- A Good Steak
- A Good Fire
My 9 year old loves a good steak, and when we ask what they want to cook while we are camping, they always say Campfire Nachos, Hamburgers, and a Steak.
For breakfast, they love Hobo Eggs!
Picking Your Steak
When we pick out steaks for our camping trip, we usually get ribeyes. We like to get thick steaks with a lot of marbling (fat). When we can catch the whole ribeye on sale, we will buy it and cut our own steaks, but the best way to get a thick cut without having to do it yourself is by asking the butcher at the store. You can ask for a 2-inch cut, and they don’t mind helping you out at all.
Tip: Having fat on the steak helps with the flavor and gives you a crust when its charred that is worth every bite.
We usually buy our steaks ahead of time, and I store them in a ziplock bag before the trip. When we pack the cooler, I will make sure the bag is buried in the ice so my steak stays cold during transport.
To season our steaks, we will bring some Montreal steak seasoning and sprinkle it on just before we cook them.
Getting Your Coals Ready
When you get ready to cook your steaks at the campsite, you are going to want to start your fire a few hours before. We like to have a good bed of coals going before we put our grate over the fire. You will want a good bed of coals that are very red and hot. Once we have the coals, we put a couple of small pieces of wood over the coals to give them some flames that will touch the meat while it cooks.
Putting Your Steak Over The Fire
You can put the steaks on the grate once your coals are ready and the grate is hot. While they cook, you will want to watch the bottom of the steak to make sure they are not burning. If you notice it is, you might have the grate too close to the coals, or the coals are too hot. You can adjust by either spreading them out some or raising your grate up.
Cooking To Perfection
Whatever you do, only flip the steak once when cooking it. You can turn it (rotate) to keep the flames from burning your meat while it cooks. (you do want the flames to touch, just not burn)
Its recommended that your steak have an internal temperature of at least 125º. You can use a meat thermometer to help figure this out if cooking steaks is new to you. We are seasoned steak grillers, so we judge it based on how the steak looks. When it has reached the right internal temperature, you can look at it to see if the edges are getting charred. If it hasn’t yet, you can move the meat away from the flames a little until it gets that crust on the edges.
Easy Sides
We like to make mashed potatoes with our steaks. For camping, we will get a tub of ready-made mashed potatoes just to make things easier. I will put them in a pan and heat them up with our double burner. You could use the fire to warm them up, just be careful…they will burn. You can also make instant mashed potatoes, they just require milk, and I don’t like to complicate things.
Another side that is good with a steak is green beans or a baked sweet potato. You can heat up the green beans with a pot, and if you want to bake a potato, you can wrap it in foil and cook it over the fire or in a dutch oven.
If you are looking for a good dutch oven recipe, see our Dutch Oven Beef Stew!
