Introduction

Howdy, and if I could follow that with a handshake, I would. I like a good handshake and looking someone in the eyes; in my circle those two mean a lot. I’m a cowboy, a cook, a writer, a dishwasher, and a purveyor of words that sometimes rhyme. I’ve cooked for legends and those that were just legends in their own minds. I’ve got more friends than I will ever have money, and I know which to value the most. I’ve been in places you can’t see from the road or even find on a map. I’ve even cooked food I can’t spell.

My kitchen isn’t typical. It has no thermostat and there are no knobs on anything that might be considered an appliance. I’ve cooked in every condition known to mankind, except an earthquake. I’ve had so much exposure at times it hurts, but it ain’t the kind of exposure you might be thinking of. I’ve been exposed to sunburn, windburn, and frostbite. I’m a chuck wagon cook.

Now you may be asking, “What is a chuck wagon cook?” Well, it sure isn’t glamorous by any stretch of the imagination. There have been times it’s been 117 degrees outside before I even built a fire, and times it’s been cold enough that you could hang meat. I remember when Bobby Flay came to challenge me to a throwdown of chicken-fried steak. It was a mild 97 degrees with a roaring fire. As sweat was dripping off his face he asked me, “Why would anyone do this?!” I told him it was for the job security, because no one else was crazy enough to do it.

Even though the modern age has crept up on us, the chuck wagon is still used today on some ranches to feed cowboys. From eating a lot of bad food off wagons and having taught myself how to cook in Dutch ovens while helping my uncle guide hunters in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, I knew I could do better. So in 1993 I bought an 1876 Studebaker chuck wagon and slowly started my business, catering for friends and family and then for local ranchers when they worked their cattle. Soon word got out about the great food and business was booming. Today my wife, Shannon, and I travel all across the country feeding hungry folks for everything from birthday parties to bar mitzvahs. I’ve also made television appearances on the Food Network’s Throwdown! with Bobby Flay, Chopped: Grill Masters, and Chopped Redemption and on NBC’s Food Fighters. More importantly, I maintain the tradition of cooking from the chuck wagon for cowboys on true working ranches during the spring and fall.

One of the talents of the wagon cook, in addition to creative cooking, is the ability to move. Now, I wish I were talking about moving like James Brown, but I’m talking the U-Haul kind. Depending on the ranch, we may set up camp made of teepees and the wagon for a few days, and then pack up and move to another pasture to work more cattle. I’ve moved camp to a different spot as often as once a day. This can be tricky when you not only have to worry about packing, but feeding a hungry crew too. I’ve stayed anywhere from one day to five-and-a-half weeks out on a ranch and seen all seasons pass through in one day.

But I’m truly a lucky man, because I get to feed cowboys. Every time I step out of my teepee to go fix breakfast for a crew, I’m carrying on a tradition and reliving history. The view out my office window doesn’t look onto skyscrapers, and you can’t catch a cab where I work, but you can catch dinner as it comes slithering through camp. I’ve cooked up some rattlesnake hors d’oeuvres good enough for any city slicker’s palate. Food doesn’t get any fresher than that!

Cowboy cooking is made from ingredients you’ll already have on hand such as potatoes, cheese, canned beans, and onions.

What I cook and the way I cook are real, simple, and authentic. Those are the three things that have always meant the most to me. A meal can be as simple as drinking a good cup of boiled coffee from the wagon with good friends. My mother taught me to put love into my cooking and prepare dishes that make you feel good when you cook them and better when you serve them. A smile and full stomach have always gone a long way for me. I think the world today needs a good recipe for values, sprinkled with a little common sense, along with good eats. I had those recipes growing up. They were dished out in generous helpings from folks who knew nothing but hard work and helping others.

I remember when I was on Chopped, folks asked me which chefs inspired me the most to cook. Well, I certainly wasn’t influenced by any “celebrity” chef. The chefs I look up to don’t have fancy titles — they are known as Mama, Aunt, Neighbor, and Friend.

Cowboy cooking is made from ingredients you’ll already have on hand such as potatoes, cheese, canned beans, and onions. You won’t need to saddle up and ride to the store to pick out some foreign food you can’t pronounce that they had to fly in from a far-off country — like California. We cowboys have evolved a little from the beans and jerky that those fellers had to exist on long ago, but the simplicity is pretty much the same.

Many of my recipes involve canned ingredients. When I’m out on the wagon for five weeks, or if the ranch headquarters is seventy miles from the nearest town, fresh fruit and veggies aren’t abundant. A common misunderstanding is that canned can’t be good. When Chef Aarón Sánchez ate my food on Chopped, he said, “Kent made refried beans with chipotle that had tons of smokiness and heat. He transformed them and made me forget they were canned.”

I’ve cooked for and cowboyed on different ranches across New Mexico, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. And with that comes a lot of tales of where I’ve been and what I’ve seen. I’ve had to chop ice to make coffee water, been in dirt storms so bad that I had to light a lantern in the middle of the day, and been in rain so heavy I had to cook below the undercarriage of the wagon. The stories I share in this book are important because they represent the authentic cowboy way of life and describe characters whose personalities and adventures color the West. They’re rooted in morals that both a cowboy and a CEO can relate to and learn from — they’re honest and straight shooting. Everyone I’ve met has shared some wisdom, and I’ll share it with y’all too.

If the food or stories don’t transport you to my camp, then surely the pictures will. Take a tour of the wagon and see the art of Dutch oven cooking, meet fellers like Brother Daniel and his dogs, smell the coffee ole Bertha is brewing up, and hear those cows bellering. I hope A Taste of Cowboy will be a journey for you into the pastures I’ve been to, so you can see the faces I’ve seen and the fires I’ve built.

So, let’s saddle up and ride out — we’re burning daylight!

Note: You can do like I do and use Red River Ranch Seasoning in place of salt and pepper in many recipes in this book. Order Red River Ranch Original Seasoning and Red River Ranch Mesquite Seasoning from www.kentrollins.com.