New to Chuck Wagon competitions?

I looked at some of the stuff I had written a while back and thought this might be of some interest to someone new to chuck wagon competitions.  Give it a look.  This, of course, is just my opinion......

August, 2006

There are many chuck wagon competitions held through out the country and you can find one somewhere just about every week end.  There are a number of ways you can locate one close to where you live.  You can subscribe to the bi-monthly publication, Rope Burns, which is put out by Bobby Newton in Gene Autry, Oklahoma.  Another way to find about chuck wagon gatherings is to get in touch with the American Chuck Wagon Association which puts out a newsletter to its members and it contains information about upcoming events.  They also set up guidelines for cook offs and provide valuable information to folks who are organizing chuck wagon cook offs. You can send your information to ACWA, 1723 E. Tate Street, Brownfield, Texas, 79316 or join the ACWA at the same address.

As this article is being written, the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium will be hosting the World Championship Chuck Wagon Cook Off in a couple of weeks.  The dates are October 12-15 in Ruidoso, New Mexico.    The event will draw wagons in from all over the country.  The total prize money will be around $10,000, plus the Bloodworth Buckle.  The buckle is awarded to the overall winner of the competition and most of those who have won the event say the buckle is far more important to them than the prize money.  

The very next week end after Ruidoso there are three competitions scheduled. All are in Texas and will be held in Llano, McKinney and Ft. Worth, Texas.  The first two of which are in their early beginnings and the Red Steagall “Cowboy Gathering” in Ft. Worth has been going on for some time.  It is a little different in that the rules call for your wagon to be hitched to a team and pulled through the streets of the “Stockyards” in the old part of Ft. Worth.  You don’t actually have to have a team of horses or mules to enter because there are some local teamsters available to hitch to your wagon.   

Many events are scheduled throughout the country and chuck wagon competitions or cook offs are catching on and we are seeing more events ever year.  So, if you are thinking about getting into this kind of activity, then get you a wagon and put yourself together the necessary equipment and get to cooking. 

Whoa Hoss, easier said than done.  Where do you get a wagon, ovens. pots, pans, clothes, poles, stakes, fire irons, utensils, and the other necessities you will find on just about every wagon you see?  A good way to start is to get your little Brownie camera or maybe a digital one may be a little better, but what ever you use, go around at a competition and take pictures of every thing you can think of in a camp and then go to the next camp and do the same thing.  You will find the ole coosies are usually pretty friendly and don’t mind answering questions and folks taking pictures of their stuff.  If you go to say ten or twenty camps you will have quite a repertoire of pictures to look at. 

I guarantee you will look at them a hundred times and still see something different each time.  Looking at the pictures will give you countless ideas and combine those ideas with your own and you will find what it is you need to look for or how you want to do something.  You can also look in your local library and see what you can find in the way of pictures.  You can look on line at the Amon Carter Museum and look for Erwin Smith’s collection.  There in you will find a multitude of ranching and chuck wagon pictures.  Check it out. 

 A number of our friends have won the various chuck wagon competitions around the country and done really well over the years.  But just because you win with a particular entry one year, there is no sure fire guarantee that you will win with it next year or even at the next cook off.  However, on one side of the coin, when you have something so good like the Adamah Ranch’s dessert entry, you can say the chances are you might just win over and over again.

 Their dessert entry, Apricot Cobbler, has won the Ruidoso event for four out of the last five years.  Everyone has their sights set on beating Adamah.  The problem being is: they are just plain hard to beat and the reason is they still look for ways to improve.  On the other side of the coin when you are new to chuck wagon competitions or like us and don’t cook all that often, you are constantly looking for a new twist to an old recipe or a new recipe all together, anything that will catch the attention of the judges’ taste buds.  There are several good cookbooks out there and are really helpful.  You might see if ACWA has any of their books left or you can check with Big Bend Saddlery in Alpine, Texas.  They have an excellent library of cookbooks.

To be continued......................