Who doesn’t love a good roast? Lamb, pork, chicken, beef; you name it! When you have a big crew of family and friends at a good camping spot, nothing is more enjoyable than sharing a meal around the campfire. Roasting meat over the fire is something that human beings have been enjoying since time began, and now, with some of the gear being offered by Adventure Kings, it’s never been easier to feed the masses.

One of the most important things to consider when making a large roast is what sort of cut you’re going to use. Legs of lamb are always a crowd pleaser, but if you want to take your roasting game to the next level, I recommend using a cut from the shoulder of an animal. Pork shoulder, lamb shoulder, or beef chuck. These cuts of meat lend themselves more to a slower cook, in that they have a lot more connective tissue in them than a traditional leg roast. This means that they usually fall apart when cooked long enough, and as a result, they’re much more forgiving to cook. The difference between a leg roast being just right and overdone is sometimes a little iffy, whereas you can be confident that a shoulder roast will have much more room for error.

Before you start cooking the meat, let it sit out for about half an hour if possible. It will cook more evenly if you let it come up to ambient temperature. Then, rub it over with olive oil and then season it well with salt, pepper, and any other herbs and spices you like the flavour of. I like smoked paprika and rosemary, but other popular choices are thyme, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, etc. To kick it up an extra notch, take a thin knife and make some deep sticking cuts into the centre of the meat, and push some thin slices of garlic down into them.

If you have the time, caramelising the outside of the roast will bring about a more intense flavour, and the best way to go about this will depend on what gear you have available. Personally, I like to stoke up some coals underneath the Adventure Kings portable BBQ plate and cook the outside of the roast over the grill section, in the same way you might cook a steak. If you don’t have your Adventure Kings portable BBQ plate with you, sit your camp oven of choice (I use a Bedourie) over the coals to get it smoking hot, and hit the roast on each side for a few minutes.

Once your meat is nicely caramelised, prepare a nice flat bed of coals for your Bedourie camp oven to sit on, put the lid on it, and then put some more coals on top. The amount of coals is something you will have to feel your way through, as different varieties of wood tend to burn differently in different areas. I suggest leaning more towards the too little side of things at first, as it’s easier to speed the process up and add heat later on, than it is to recover a piece of meat that’s been burned. Add some wine or stock to the camp oven as well to keep a bit of moisture on the bottom. Even water will do.

If you don’t have any other side dishes on the go, you can lay a bed of vegetables on the bottom of the camp oven first. Popular choices include onion, carrot, potato and pumpkin. Depending on how many people you’re feeding, you may even have 2 Bedouries on the go; one for the meat and another for the veggies.

Now one of the tricks to camp oven cooking is checking the meat just enough to make sure it’s doing OK and you have enough moisture in there, but not checking so often that the heat keeps escaping and you add hours to the cooking time. If your roast is fairly big, I feel that checking after the first hour and a half is a good place to start, and then you can play it by ear after that. Keep in mind, that the more you do this, the more confidence and familiarity you will get in the way you prepare your coals, and you will feel as though the guess work is taken out of it.

For a large shoulder roast, at least 3 hours is ample time to break down all of the connective tissues and turn the meat into a tender, sticky, juicy meal. Don’t think of the process as a recipe; think of it more as a few guidelines to follow. Before you know it, you’ll be a camp oven master and all of your friends will want to go camping with you because they’ll be guaranteed a fabulous feed.