Steak Foil Packets (Hobo Dinner)

These Steak Foil Packets (sometimes called Hobo Dinners) are so easy you will not believe it! Fold rice, steak, and onion soup mix into some foil, bake, and voila! Deliciously tender steak and rice, ready to pair with whatever vegetables you want!

Maybe it’s the food. Have you ever made tin foil dinners when camping? It’s a lot of fun, and so easy. This is one of my favorite meals to make either camping or at home. It just comes together so quickly, and the oven (or camp coals, or the grill) do all the work.

You can add basically anything you want: rice, potatoes, veggies. Pair it with chicken, steak, ground beef, whatever you’re in the mood for.

For this recipe, we are seasoning steak and rice with onion soup mix and evaporated milk. It’s super cheap and easy to put together. (If you are an onion soup mix hater, think again. I’m telling you, it does amazing things for beef. Check out all the reviews on this Easy Fall-Apart Pot Roast with Carrots!) Many tin foil dinner recipes call for a can of cream of something soup, but using the onion soup mix gives it a very savory and delicious flavor.

I made these steak foil packets the other night, and Eric kept going on about how delicious and nostalgic it was. He’s like, what is that distinct flavor? I told him it’s the onion soup mix. He said, it tastes exactly like the ones my mom used to make. I said, Eric, these ARE the ones your mom used to make, she gave me the recipe! I guess I should have kept my mouth shut and let him believe the magic.

Foil packet dinners take just a few minutes to put together.

Take the short ends of the foil and bring them together.

Fold the top, then fold the edges into a triangle.

Fold the edges up until you have a cute little pouches. Place them all on a sheet pan, toss them in the oven and forget about it.

Here’s what a hobo dinner looks like right out of the oven. The meat is so tender (see photo below, it just falls apart), and the rice is perfectly seasoned. Be careful opening it! Use oven mitts. You will feel like you’re in one of those relay races trying to put on clothes while wearing gloves.

One other nice thing about hobo foil packets is that you can accidentally drop your entire hot pan of food on the ground and it still won’t ruin dinner, because it’s tightly packed in foil. Just pick it up and carry on with your photo shoot like no big deal. Not that this happened to me or anything.

Ingredients :

heavy duty foil

 4 cups cooked rice

 1 (1 ounce) packet onion soup mix

 1 pound steak (cube steak or top round steak)

 1/2 cup evaporated milk, divided

 carrots, zucchini, asparagus, bell peppers, green beans, etc. (optional*)

Instructions :

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (Or see notes for camp fire or grill instructions.)

Tear off 4 large sheets of heavy duty foil, about 10-12 inches across. Regular foil will work too, just be careful not to tear it. You can double wrap if you're worried about it.

Add 1 cup of cooked rice to the center of each sheet of foil.

Top rice with about 1-2 teaspoons of onion soup mix.

Use a sharp knife to slice the steak into 12 thin strips, about 1 inch across. See photos.

Place 3 strips of steak on top of each mound of rice.

(At this point, you can add chopped vegetables around the edges of the rice. Season with salt and pepper. See notes.)

Pour 2 tablespoons of evaporated milk over the top of each mound of steak and rice.

Sprinkle the remaining onion soup mix evenly over the rest of the steak in each packet.

For each sheet of foil, bring the short ends of the foil together over the rice and steak. Press together and fold down securely over the food. For each end, fold the corners in, and then continue folding until you have a nice secure packet. See photos!

Place the 4 packets on a large baking sheet.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Remove from the oven and carefully open each packet, being very careful not to burn yourself with the steam.

Serve hot!

Enjoy!!