Slow-Cooked Camp Oven Lamb Shanks in Red Wine and Rosemary: The Cool-Night Bush Dinner That Cooks Itself

The trick to a proper camp oven feed isn't the recipe. It's letting the coals do the work while you're off doing literally anything else. Slow-cooked lamb shanks in red wine and rosemary tick every box for an autumn bush dinner. They're cheap as chips at any Coles or Woolies butcher counter (&dollar;8–&dollar;12 a shank), they take about ten minutes of actual hands-on work, and the camp oven turns them into the kind of fall-off-the-bone, dark-glossy-sauce meal that makes everyone at the next campsite wander over to ask what you've got going on. What you need Ingredients (serves 4) 4 lamb shanks (around 350–400 g each) 2 tbsp olive oil 2 tbsp plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper 1 large brown onion, roughly diced 2 carrots, cut into thick rounds 2 sticks celery, sliced 4 garlic cloves, smashed 2 tbsp tomato paste 1½ cups (375 ml) red wine — anything cleanskin shiraz/cab works, don't use anything you wouldn't drink 1 cup (250 ml) beef stock (Massel cubes are fine) 1 tin (400 g) crushed tomatoes 4 sprigs fresh rosemary (or 2 tsp dried) 2 bay leaves 500 g baby potatoes, halved (optional — you can serve over mash instead) Salt, cracked black pepper Gear 9- or 10-inch cast-iron camp oven (Hard Yakka, Bedourie, or any heavy-based Dutch oven) Lid lifter or strong tongs Camp shovel for moving coals Heat-proof gloves Sharp knife and chopping board Wooden spoon A fire pit and a separate small fire to keep producing fresh coals (eucalyptus hardwood is the gold standard) How to make it Get the fire going early. Build your main cooking fire 60–90 minutes before you want to start the shanks. You need a deep bed of glowing coals, not flames. While that burns down, build a smaller “feeder” fire alongside to keep producing fresh coals throughout the cook. Coat the shanks. Roll each shank in the seasoned flour until lightly covered. Tap off the excess. The flour helps thicken the sauce later. Brown the shanks. Sit the camp oven directly on a small bed of coals. Add the olive oil. Once it's shimmering, sear the shanks two at a time, 3–4 minutes per side, until they've got a deep golden-brown crust. Set them aside on a plate. Build the base. Drop the onion, carrot, celery and garlic into the same oven. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring, until the onion softens and starts catching the brown bits off the bottom. Add the tomato paste. Stir it through and let it cook for a minute — this deepens the flavour and takes the raw acid edge off. Deglaze with the wine. Pour the red wine in and scrape the bottom with a wooden spoon to lift everything off. Let it bubble for 2 minutes to cook off the alcohol bite. Add stock, tomatoes, herbs. Tip in the beef stock, crushed tomatoes, rosemary sprigs and bay leaves. Stir, then nestle the lamb shanks back in. The liquid should come about two-thirds up the sides of the meat — top up with a splash of water if needed. Lid on, into the coals. Lift the camp oven onto a flat bed of about 12–14 hot coals. Shovel another 18–20 coals onto the lid (the standard camp-oven rule is roughly twice as many on top as underneath when braising). Add the halved baby potatoes around the shanks now if you're including them. Slow cook 2½ to 3 hours. Check every 45 minutes — replace any coals that have burnt down to white ash, top up the sauce with a splash of stock or water if it's reducing too fast, and gently turn the shanks once at the halfway mark. The shanks are done when the meat is starting to pull away from the bone and a fork slides in with no resistance. Rest, then serve. Pull the camp oven off the coals, lid still on, and rest for 10 minutes. The sauce will thicken slightly. Serve straight from the oven onto enamel plates with crusty bread, mashed potato, or just on its own with a glass of the rest of the red. Camp tips Prep at home. Dice the onion, carrot, celery and garlic into a snap-lock bag the night before. Pre-measure the flour with salt and pepper into a small container. The whole cook becomes a 5-minute setup at the campsite. No camp oven? Use a heavy-based pot in the caravan. Same recipe, on the gas cooktop, low heat for 2½ hours with the lid on. Stir every 30 minutes and add water if it dries out. Same result, no fire required. Boxed wine is fine. A 4-litre cleanskin from BWS or Dan's is around &dollar;20 and gives you 10 of these dinners worth of cooking wine. The wine boils down, the alcohol cooks off, only the flavour is left. Leftovers are even better the next day. Pull the meat off the bones, mix it through the sauce, and reheat in a foil parcel buried in coals for breakfast or lunch. Or load it onto sourdough rolls with a slice of melted cheese for shank rolls. Total fire ban day? Don't risk it. Make this in the caravan or in a slow cooker on a 240V campsite. The recipe is forgiving of any low-and-slow heat source. Pair it with the right gear A good cast-iron camp oven is the kind of bit of kit you'll cook hundreds of meals out of and pass on to the kids. If you're setting up the camp kitchen for the first time and want the rest of the cookware that supports a slow-braise feed like this — heavy-based pans, lid lifters, fire-pit gear and proper enamel plates — the camping and hiking gear collection is a good place to start. For the caravan kitchen version of the recipe, the caravan accessories collection covers the cooktop and storage gear that makes a low-and-slow cook on a gas burner painless. Final word This is the dinner that turns “we're miles from anywhere” into a feature, not a problem. Three hours of doing not much, ten minutes of actual work, and a meal that tastes like you fluked something well above your pay grade. Got your own camp oven shank recipe with a different twist — Moroccan with apricots, Asian with star anise, or just the way your old man used to do it? Drop it in the comments below.