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......................

Clovis Cook-Off Conclusion.........

BREAKDOWN OF RECIPES AND RESULTS AT CLOVIS 2011:

The first thing we did when we arrived at the cooking site was Skip got the fire started in the big stove and the little ground oven.  (We stopped off at the local drive in and everyone got a cup of coffee) I was washing the beans and Michael Hunn was preparing the dish washing area.  Cody was taking care of making the coffee and getting the water lines run to the area.  Everyone was in a jovial mood and I was playfully hollering at our neighbors across the way…Dale Grublenik, the girls at C-C, and our friends from Colorado Sheryl and Rex.

In short, we were up and running full speed stopping only to grab a quick bite of Blueberry cake to go with our coffee. 

 

BEANS:  Once the beans were on using the Potjie and the iron cross bar over the ground oven they had a place to call home during the course of the next few hours until they were done.   The beans had a cup of brown sugar, one medium onion quartered, ¼ of a Mesquite Smoked BBQ Brisket, two TBS Hatch red Chile powder,and  salt added.
BEAN RESULTS:  4^th PLACE

The beans had a beautiful color, the beans were done, the brisket gave a real nice flavor and when the competition dish was served up, there was a little dab of the brisket meat placed upon the top of the beans. 

 

POTATOES:   Michael and Cody began the potato slicing and onion dicing while Ed diced the roasted Poblano peppers.  Ed had taken the two pounds of peppered bacon earlier and fried them and saved the grease (that we didn’t use) and put the 1” bacon pieces into a bowl for safe keeping.  When the slicing and dicing  was done the three of them put a layer of potatoes, then onions, then poblano peppers, Lowrey’s seasoning, Mrs. Dash Seasoning, then another layer  the same way.  I think there were three layers in one of the 16” ovens and two layers in the second 16” oven.  The ovens were set aside and were going to await the coals to be added to them about 10 am.  To each of the two 16” ovens went two 12 oz bottles of Sprite soda. The potatoes were done in about an hour or so. 

When we got ready to dish up the serving for the judges I picked off the potatoes from the top that had the most visible seasoning.  In retrospect I believe that maybe the potatoes on the bottom probably had a more thorough flavor because the bottom potatoes would have been cooked in the Sprite whereas the top layers of potatoes would only have gotten the steam effect of the Sprite.  Also the spices would most likely have somewhat “washed” to the bottom thereby giving the bottom a more spicy flavor.  The potatoes didn’t have a look of “Wow this looks great.”  They looked OK but not “knock your socks of pretty.” Will have to think on this recipe a while to see how to make the presentation better.  I think the taste was there and I made an error in judgement as to where the potatoes were selected from to turn in as the entry.

POTATO RESULTS:  4^th PLACE

Dessert: We started the peach cobbler pretty early in the morning using the small Mexican Blue pot to cook them down.  The peaches were opened and drained and then cut into small pieces.  Into the cooking pot went: 1 stick unsalted butter, 1 small bottle white Karo Syrup, 2 cups brown sugar, 2 cups of white sugar, 1 cup Amaretto De Serrano, 1- 14oz. bottle of Dr. Pepper, 1 box of Tapioca, 1 box of Peach Jell-O, Juice from one Lemon, Allspice, Nutmeg, ground Cloves and the token dash of Hatch chile powder.  To thicken flour and water was added. The crust was vinegar, sugar, almond flavor, and butter flavored Crisco.  The mixture cooked up nicely and provided a very nice flavor to my way of thinking.  Rethinking the recipe….I guess it was just too sweet and had lost the peach flavor.  A consideration for next time might be to add another box of peach jello, cut the brown and white sugar in half and add the juice of the second lemon. As a side note this same recipe has placed at other events.

DESSERT RESULTS:   No place!

Meat:  We used Jerry Baird’s All Purpose Seasoning just in the flour.  The flour consisted of 50% flour and 50% corn starch.  The first steak I prepared I put some of Baird’s Jalapeno Seasoning on the meat and when I dipped the meat into the dip, the seasoning all washed off.  I immediately thought that this method was not going to work so I then added the Jalopeno Seasoning to the flour as well as the All Purpose.  Ed Perkins was helping me with this task by battering the steak and placing them on the big cookie sheet. We were using the big stove using two 20” skillets on top.  This procedure worked very well and all the steaks were placed into the 17” Maca oven.  

My evaluation was that the meat was a little too salty.  I tried to compensate for the saltiness of the dip but didn’t reduce the AP seasoning enough.  The steak was very crunchy, even afer about 1 ½ hours the crust was still crunchy.  I think this was a plus and if it had not been over salty we would have done better than the FOURTH PLACE we received. 

MEAT RESULTS: 3^rd PLACE

BREAD:  The liquid mixture for the bread was mixed rather early in the small quart crock and set aside to ferment.  It did nicely and was ready to add to the 12 cup flour mixture with two scant tsp of salt about 9 or 9:30.  The liquid mixture of two eggs, 1 ½ cans of milk, 3 cups warm water, and ¾ cup of sugar was added to the flour mixture and kneaded the required amount of oil into the flour for 10-15 minutes until it was SAABB (smooth as a baby's butt).  Then it was placed in a pan and covered with a dish towel until it had risen for approximately an hour or so.  Then  Cody, Ed and Michael pinched the bread dough off until they were about the size of golf balls and dabbed the top from the oil that was put into the pan liner and placed into the pan leaving space in between each roll.   We used a cast iron muffin pan in a 14” dutch oven for the rolls we were going to turn in to the judges.  One of the rolls was made like a 3-part dinner roll and the other 4 or 5 were just big single rolls.  We made two complete batches of the “Jerry Baird Yeast Rolls” which made somewhere around 80-100 rolls.  The batch for the judges cooked well on the top but was slow to get the bottoms browned.  We nursed them along and finally removed them from the trivet and placed them directly on to the bed of coals.  With a constant eye they finally browned on the bottom.  We removed them from the coals and dipped the “to be judged rolls” into salted butter and placed in a pan and covered until it was time to turn in the entry.  I was very pleased with the look and taste of the rolls.  The three part roll was too big to get into the entry container so I pulled 1/3 of it off so the whole roll could be placed in the container as well.

*In looking through a bread book, I see where the bread needs to be proofed longer.  This recipe is pretty much like a Parker House Hotel roll and there needs to be about 30 minutes allowed for the rolls to rise after they have been placed in the pan BUT before they are put in the oven.

BREAD RESULTS: No place!

GRAVY:  In the past we have used bacon grease as the fat for the rue.  I had been looking through some cookbooks last week and noticed that Grady Spears uses unsalted butter for the fat.  I think we put in maybe 6 sticks of butter then flour to make up enough rue that will take about 1 ½ gallons of milk.  The milk was 1 gallon of half and half and about a half gallon of regular vitamin D milk. To this we added the cracked pepper corns that Ed mashed up in a frying pan.  Not knowing how much to crack, he had to go back and do some more because as we were blending it in to the mixture the amount didn’t feel right so he did more and we achieved what we wanted.  The mixture was just about right for thickness however it did turn a bit lumpy and Ed  strained it through the French fry skimmer to get the lumps out then it was placed into the little blue pot we used for the cobbler.  Obviously Mike had cleaned it along with a whole lost of other stuff that just continually got dirty.  He spent a lot of time wrinkling his hands.  The blue put then fits nicely into a gray pot full of hot water effectively making it a double boiler and an easy way to keep the gravy until it is time to turn in to the judges.

The gravy had a nice consistency however Skip noted that he thought it was still a bit lumpy.  Next time we will try to add the flour in smaller quantities and in doing so—sift the flour into the milk.  The gravy may have had just a bit too much salt.

GRAVY RESULTS:  2^nd PLACE

The way the awards for the Duke of The Dutch Oven Cook Off in Clovis, New Mexico is decided is that the overall winner is derived by the cooking team that accumulates the largest sum of prize money.  That is all well and good because that is the way it was set up in the beginning four years ago.  To my way of thinking the overall winner should be decided by the team that accumulates the most points which would mean they cooked the best food in all the categories. I don’t have a problem with the way the contest is run, I am just trying to feel better about how we did as a team overall.  According to prize money we came in fourth and according to points accumulated we were second.  The first place team was still first, but only by about ten points.  So with this line of thinking I can look at the menu items and say to my cooking partners that we did pretty darn good either way.  At first I wanted to scrutinize the items closely but after further thought I realized we only need to take a close look at the items that did not place at all which was the BREAD and DESSERT. 

The Clovis Boys...minus Steven

 The Clovis cook off is a real good venue and is sponsored by Joe’s (Joe Rhodes) Boot Shop and he is a “super fine” fellow.  We enjoy coming here and getting to cook with the military who forms one team and uses Jerry Slaton’s wagon.  The other teams are always fun to be around but I just wish we had more time to visit.  We actually do have a bit more time here than some of the other cook-offs….I guess because the wagons aren’t part of the judging so there isn’t as much work to be done prepping the camp, plus your trailer is only ten feet from your camp.  Makes things pretty nice. 

See ya on down the road

Wayne