Lamb Roast Camp Oven

Lamb Roast Cooked in the Camp Oven

This is how we prepare and cook lamb roast in our camp oven.

Meal prep is pretty essential to get the best out of your camp cooking. I highly recommend every camper purchases a vacuum sealer. They aren’t too expensive, especially if you get an Adventure Kings one from 4WD Supa Centre (not sponsored, I have one and they work well).

Cooking roasts in the camp oven is pretty straight forward and just requires a bit of trial and error to get your setup working best for you.

We use a Potjie King (pronounced “poy-kie”) stainless steel cooking unit that can be used with an Aussie camp oven (or the African Potjie basically a cast iron camp oven), as a grill or a cooking platform for a fry pan etc. Really easy to control the temperature with this unit especially with a camp oven vs sitting on coals, but either method works fine just depends what you like. Our camp oven is an Adventure Kings 12 inch spun steel camp oven.

Gear

This is the gear we use when cooking with a camp oven.

# Potjie King stainless steel cooker

# Adventure Kings 12 inch spun steel camp oven and trivet

# Briquettes

# Old oven gloves

# Metal tongs

Ingredients

Make sure you get a leg of lamb with the bone or else it will cook too quickly.

This is enough for about 4 people, but if you add a few more sides then you could feed 6. Depends on whether or not it is a bunch of the lads then maybe only 4. Increase the lamb size for more and add an extra 30 minutes cooking time for every 500g.

# 1.5 kg leg of lamb

# Olive oil

# Rub of your choice (I use Paul Mercurio’s Lamb Rub on all my lamb)

# 3 x garlic cloves

# 2 x sprigs of rosemary

# Veggies of your choice

Preparation

So I like to do a bit of prep before we head out camping. But you can do this on the day, different strokes for different folks. Whatever floats your boat.

Make a few cuts in the lamb and insert the garlic cloves and sprigs of rosemary.

Then rub the lamb all over generously with olive oil.

Now add your preferred rub to the lamb, again be generous here.

Once the lamb is nicely coated in your rub of choice vacuum seal and store in the fridge to cook in a few days when out at camp.

If you are doing this on the day then you can skip the whole vacuum seal part.

Buying a vacuum sealer is the go and makes meal prep that much easier. With your meat if you are preparing it before hand and adding a rub or marinade, the meat will be so good when it comes time to cook it as it would have been marinading for a day or two.

Method

Total time of 2 hours including 30 minutes to get your briquettes ready.

Total cook time of 1.5 hours. Allow for 30 minutes per 500 grams of meat approximately.

If you want to cook it a lot slower then add half the amount of briquettes and double your time, but check the roast every 30 minutes to an hour to make sure it is not cooking to quickly. Trial and error.

I preheat around 23 briquettes, that should get you to a temperature somewhere around 180 degrees. I use briquettes with the camp oven and charcoal when I am grilling meat. Doesn’t really matter about the flavour of briquettes when using a camp oven and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than the charcoal I buy. Briquettes also hold their heat a lot longer so work well with the camp oven.

Preheating the briquettes in the Potjie King is super easy, 3 or 4 fire lighters on the bottom and then load the briquettes in the middle section, light the fire lighters and in about 30 minutes or so they have that white dusty look and are ready to go.

Make sure your camp oven is nicely seasoned with olive oil, including your roasting trivet. Now add the prepared lamb roast to the camp oven and close the lid.

Once the briquettes are ready, add a larger portion of the briquettes to the camp oven lid, I add about 13 of the 23 and leave the remaining 10 on the bottom. You want to generate more heat from the top than bottom. I use metal tongs to move the briquettes around, and an old oven glove (office hands can’t take the heat).

Cook for about 30 minutes, you should hear the meat sizzling nicely, and then check the roast. The lamb should have a nice crisp crust to it. If it looks like it is cooking too quickly, remove a few briquettes (you will find you have issues when it is super windy when camping at the beach as the wind will get the briquettes going quickly – so use a few less when it’s windy and more if you need them later on). This is when a charcoal starter is really good to get a few more going or use a fire if you can have one.

After 30 minutes, add your veggies to the camp oven surrounding the lamb. Now cook for another hour and you should be done when the veggies are nice and soft when poking with a knife. Sometimes it is easier to boil your potatoes for a bit before adding them to the camp oven to ensure they are cooked perfectly.

Another good option with your veggies (potatoes and corn) is to wrap them in foil and throw them around the coals in a fire if you have one. Potatoes will take at least an hour and corn about 30-45 minutes. Sweet potato is the best, especially the ones with the purple skin rather than the orange skin. When throwing corn in the coals make sure you add a little butter.

Your roast should be tender and pink in the middle. With camp ovens it is all about trial and error, sometimes you will over cook the meat but practice makes perfect as everyone’s setup is a bit different. Wind will also be a big factor, remembering that the wind is going to get your briquettes burning faster and more heat.

If you would like to read our guide on getting the right temperature for your camp oven, read our post here.

Recipe and method by Peter.