Cookout at the OK Corral

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Oct 6, 2004 by TERESA J. FARNEY THE GAZETTE

Under a deep blue Western sky, a cast-iron pot of beans bubbles over an open flame, the tantalizing aroma of ham hocks and smoke filling the air. Nearby is a rickety chuck wagon, where a cook fixes batter for a pan of biscuits that will go into a cast-iron Dutch oven.

In a few minutes, one of the cooks will bang the sides of the triangular dinner bell, and the hungry masses will come running to fill their tin plates with grub.

It's a scene straight out of the cattle drives along the Goodnight- Loving Trail from Texas into Colorado in the 1800s.

Only this is 2004, and the cook stirring the pot of beans is Beverly Cox, a cookbook author who grew up on a cattle ranch near Cheyenne, Wyo., studied cooking in France and now, on occasion, hosts chuck-wagon meals at her family's ranch in the Chalk Bluffs region of northern Colorado.

She's also written a cookbook, "Spirit of the West -- Cooking from Ranch House and Range," and even in this fast-paced culinary era of convection ovens, take-out foods and pizza delivery, she knows she's tapping into a decent-sized market for chuck wagon-style cooking.

There's the 290-member (and growing) American Chuckwagon Association, which sponsors chuck-wagon cooking contests throughout the West and Midwest. There are chuck-wagon devotees who transport their rigs from cookoff to cook-off, even into Canada. And there are several chuck-wagon cookbooks, including one from the American Chuckwagon Association.

"I think people all over the world have a long-standing attraction to the idea of the cowboy and vast expanses and possibilities for individualism represented by the American West," Cox said.

Or, to put it more directly, "There's a little bit of cowboy in all of us," said Dotty Griffith, a food journalist and restaurant critic for The Dallas Morning News, widely considered an expert on cowboy cooking.

She, too, has a new cookbook, "The Contemporary Cowboy Cookbook: Recipes from the Wild West to Wall Street" (Taylor Trade Publishing, $16.95) but she said it encompasses more than recipes.

"My new cookbook includes chuck-wagon cooking, but it's a lifestyle book that celebrates the cowboy lifestyle," she said. "So many people are intrigued with western music, decor, clothing as well as western/cowboy vacations and adventure travel that nothing is hotter right now than cowboy."

Food, however, still is a big part of the cowboy lifestyle, and cook-offs give chuckwagon aficionados a place to bond and a way to preserve a heritage that is near and dear to their hearts. Many of the contestants are hobbyists and historical re-enactors who have lovingly restored old chuck wagons or built replicas of them.

Kit Haddock of the Heart Bar Ranch and Cattle Co. in Monument has been fooling around with cook-offs for 10 years and was a contestant at the Colorado State Fair's third annual chuck-wagon cook-off, held in August.

"This wagon is a Colorado freight wagon that was more than 100 years old when I bought it," he said. "I added the chuck box, making it a chuck wagon. 'Chuck' is what the cowboys call food, and the box, or chuck box, is where the food staples are stored and prepared."

No matter where the cookoffs are held, contestants are expected to reproduce 19thcentury trail-drive food.

Haddock and his team did just that with their Dutch ovenroasted beef, beans, fried potatoes, biscuits and dry-cherry bread pudding. They took first place for their bread and dessert and second place for their potatoes and beef, and ended up with the Grand Championship Prize, defeating four other chuck-wagon cooking teams.

Even though Cox wasn't participating in a cook-off, she and another cook prepared many of the same foods -- beef, beans, biscuits and potatoes -- at a Sunday lunch in late August. She had invited family, neighbors, friends and fellow foodies, who got a chance to see firsthand how food was prepared in the 1800s for cowboys on cattle drives.

"There's nothing better than campfire-cooked frijoles," she said. "The trick to cooking them on an open fire is to stir them often -- about every 20 minutes -- to be sure they aren't sticking to the bottom of the Dutch oven."

The other trick at high altitude is to be sure to allow enough time for cooking.

"Better plan an extra hour or so for them to get completely done," she said.

To get the crowd fed, Cox enlisted the help of cook Ivan Wilson, the museum curator at Nunn, a small town near the Cox ranch. A chuck- wagon "cookie" hobbyist, Wilson has restored an original chuck wagon from the 1800s and brought it to the luncheon.

His contribution was making biscuits, sausage gravy and potatoes with onions -- and providing the muscles to lift and haul the heavy cast-iron pots.

Biscuits are one of Wilson's signature dishes. After mixing up the dough, he carefully cut them out with a hollow, dented Calumet baking powder can that belonged to his 97-year-old mother, Hattie, who also was at the lunch.

"This biscuit cutter can has been in the family for 70 years," he said. "I use her (his mom's) biscuit recipe and couldn't think of using anything else but this old can for cutting them out."