Cowboy Cooking

by Sheryl Smith-Rodgers

The sun's barely up in Amarillo, Texas, and already dozens of cowboys are busy building campfires to cook the noon meal at the World Championship Chuckwagon Roundup. Before the morning is over, 32 teams will prepare a feast of breaded beef cutlets, mashed potatoes, baked beans and sourdough biscuits, trying to replicate grub served on Western cattle trails in the 1860s.

"The secret to a good chicken-fried steak is how you batter the meat, the temperature of the grease and the kind of grease you use," confides Randy Whipple, 42, one of six chefs representing the nearby JA Ranch, whose co-founder, Charles Goodnight, invented the chuck wagon and revolutionized cowboy cuisine 140 years ago.

Amarillo's annual June cookoff is part of a ranching heritage celebration called Cowboy Roundup USA. This year's event, scheduled June 2-3 at the Tri-State Fairgrounds, also features rodeos, an ice cream crankoff, cowboy music and the chance to eat authentic cowboy chow.

Throughout the year, about 30 chuck wagon cookoffs are held in Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. Most are privately sponsored in conjunction with a Western heritage event.

Chefs compete to show off their culinary skills, win cash prizes and demonstrate how—and what—cowboys ate while tending and driving livestock across the West. "We want to preserve and honor our ranching heritage," says Cutter Stapleton of Amarillo, president of Cowboy Roundup USA.

Meals on wheels

Chuck wagon cookoffs, such as the one in Amarillo, started in the late 1980s. Other popular cookoffs are part of the National Cowboy Symposium and Celebration in Lubbock, Texas, in September, and the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium in Ruidoso, N.M., in October.

"Most people compete as a hobby, but it requires a lot of money and manpower to do it," says Alvin Davis, 78, who founded Lubbock's cowboy celebration in 1989. "A chuck wagon alone costs thousands of dollars."

Still, participants willingly haul their loaded wagons on trailers to weekend cookoffs, where they set up camp alongside teams of other cooks. For several hours, the teams put up canvas tarps that serve as roofs, unload supplies and dig pits for their cast-iron grills.

The work's hot and grueling. No wonder trail cooks of old—often nicknamed "Cookie" or "Coosie" (a derivative of cocinero, Spanish for cook)—got cranky along the trail.

"A wagon cook had to get up at 3 a.m. to start his fires and biscuits," explains cook Bill Thompson, who restored the 1900s Springfield wagon used by the JA Ranch crew. "He wouldn't get to bed until after dark, so he had a reputation for being cantankerous and mean."

Charles Goodnight, co-founder of the JA Ranch, invented the chuck wagon in 1866 when he bolted a wooden box with compartments onto the back of an Army surplus wagon. He covered the box with a hinged lid that—when opened and supported by a single leg—became a worktable for mixing dough or slicing beef.

Inside the compartmentalized pantry, Goodnight stowed kitchen staples and equipment, including cast-iron kettles, pots, and Dutch ovens, a coffee grinder and 3-gallon coffee pots. The wagon also held bedrolls, guns, medicine, kerosene lamps, branding irons, tools, firewood, whiskey (for "medicinal purposes"), and a 30-gallon wooden water barrel.

Chuck wagons quickly revolutionized the cattle industry and were used extensively along cattle trails until the advent of railroads, refrigeration and barbed wire in the early 1880s.

Pickup trucks, trailers and smaller ranches ultimately reduced the need for chuck wagons. Cowboys could simply head out early in the morning, work the cattle and go home at night. Today, some ranchers still use wagons to feed hired hands or guests on their spreads.

Campfire cooking

At the Amarillo contest, and most other chuck wagon cookoffs, organizers furnish ingredients: 20 pounds of pintos, 15 pounds of potatoes, 2 gallons of canned peaches, 60 cubed steaks, and other staples such as flour, sugar, eggs and oil. Each team must cook enough food to feed at least 40 people who buy tickets to sample the cowboy cuisine.

Cooking techniques, seasonings (no chili powder allowed), and written recipes—if they're used—vary.

"I cook by feel," says Dexter Spalding, 47, as he layers strips of crust across a peach cobbler at the JA Ranch wagon. "Like Mama used to: a pinch of this and a pinch of that."

At the C Bar C Ranch wagon, Sue Cunningham, 71, of Hartley, Texas, bakes her peach cobbler in a 16-inch Dutch oven heated with mesquite charcoal. Coals heaped atop the oven's heavy iron lid brown the lattice crust, dusted with cinnamon and sugar. Before noon, she cuts a huge square from the cobbler and slides it into a Styrofoam container. On a tray, she stacks the box with others containing her team's entries and carries them to a nearby judging hall.

"Wish us luck!" she hollers over her shoulder.

A point system combining both cooking and wagon authenticity determines the top chuck wagon team in Amarillo.

Judges rank food entries in five categories—chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, pinto beans, sourdough biscuits and peach cobbler—based on appearance, aroma and taste. Cash awards and points go to the top three winners in each category.

"I don't like a lot of garlic," says judge Millie Bingham of Amarillo as she samples a bite of chicken-fried steak. "I like thin breading and not much gristle."

Judges also award points for tidy campsites, period Western wear, and friendly dispositions (crusty cooks lose points). Top-ranking wagons must be close to museum quality. Few originals exist; most are old farm wagons that were bought and converted into chuck wagons.

"We look to see if you can hook up a team to the wagon right there and take off," says Don Johnson, who oversees wagon judging in Amarillo. "We also check for a wind-up clock, tobacco of the period, and if there's a straight razor with a mug and shaving equipment. Kerosene lanterns must be in working condition."

By day's end, the cookoff's traveling trophy—a bronze miniature of a historic chuck wagon—and $1,000 cash goes to the Gayland Ward Seed Co. team from Hereford, Texas (pop. 14,597). Teammate Pam Wilson helped her squad take top honors with her feather-light sourdough biscuits.

"I mix my dough with my hands until I get just the right texture," Wilson says of her bread-making technique. "Then I pat the dough out with my hands until I get the right height."

From there, she's mum on further details.

"You have to be married to a Wilson to get the recipe," adds Julie Wilson, her crewmember and daughter-in-law.

Quick Peach Cobbler

3/4 cup oleo
3 and 3/4 cups sugar
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
6 teaspoons baking powder
3 dashes salt
3 cups milk
3 teaspoons almond extract
1 and 1/2 gallons sliced peaches (don't use all the juice)

Melt oleo in a 16-inch Dutch oven. Mix batter: sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, milk and extract. Pour into oleo, then put peaches in last. Bake 25 to 30 minutes with slow coals under oven and hot coals on lid until done. Be sure batter is done. If not cooking on coals, bake in oven at 375 degrees.

From Chuckwagon Recipes and Others, by Sue Cunningham and Jean Cates

Round Steak and Gravy

1 large round steak
3 tablespoons flour
1 large onion, sliced
1 bell pepper, sliced thin
1 pod of garlic, minced
1 can tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
Worcestershire to taste
1 cup water

Cut round steak and brown in Wesson oil using cast-iron Dutch oven. When brown, add flour and brown. Add water, tomatoes and other ingredients. Cover and simmer until meat is tender.

Visit www.cowboyroundupusa.org or www.chuckwagon.org for more information.

Sheryl Smith-Rodgers writes from her home in Blanco, Texas.

first appeared: 5/21/2006