By Pableaux Johnson

“A big thick char-grilled T-bone, a pile of hot mashed potatoes, and an ice cold Lone Star Beer—that’s my idea of West Texas cowboy cuisine.”

Even though Chef Grady Spears didn’t grow up on a West Texas cattle ranch, he’s played a significant role in updating cowboy cuisine and bringing it to food lovers outside the Lone Star state.

Spears’ cooking goes beyond the simple beefsteak to such dishes liked stacked pheasant enchiladas in salsa verde, braised cabbage with chile pasilla and port wine, and buttermilk pies spiked with rum-soaked raisins.

As the owner and head-cook at his Reata restaurant in the remote western town of Alpine, Spears developed a new twist to ranch-style cooking traditions and successfully exported his innovations to the Texas cattle city of Fort Worth and the toney town of Beverly Hills. But despite his distinctly urban migration, Spears’ food keeps strong roots in the living cowboy culture of the Trans-Pecos borderlands.

Spears’ 1999 book A Cowboy in the Kitchen (10 Speed Press) presents both his popular Reata recipes adapted for the home kitchen and an informative take on ranch life and cuisine. Spears co-authored with noted Texas food writer Robb Walsh, who fills the storied history of cooking on the range, all the way from cowboy coffee to the finer points of roasting goats.

Here are a few of the pillars of cowboy cooking according to Spears, with a few of his own twists thrown in.

BIG BEEF

Though most people expect big slaps of meat to be at the core of the cowboy cuisine, thick steaks are traditionally more of a “going to town” meal than an everyday menu item. Beef, though plentiful, fresh and on the hoof, only appeared in steak form during special occasions for most cowboys working West Texas ranches.
GRILLED STRIP STEAK

DUTCH OVEN BEANS

Much of cowboy cooking is based on the tradition of the traveling chuck wagon, a kitchen on wheels, used to feed far-flung ranch hands, and campfire Dutch oven cooking.

The versatile cast-iron pots known as Dutch ovens were the range cook’s best friend, since they could be used for nearly every kind of cookery (including sourdough baking). Cooks would ladle hot coals on the lids of these heavy pots for even heat and two-sided cooking. Tangy sourdough rolls and biscuits baked in a coal-covered Dutch oven became standard starches and gravy soppers. The ever-present pinto bean, prized for its durability and nutrition, was often given a more direct Dutch oven treatment. Beans cooked long and slow over an open fire formed a core of cowboys’ everyday fare.
RANCH BEANS

MEXICAN BORDER INFLUENCES

The political and culinary borders between Texas and Mexico tends to get blurry in the Trans-Pecos ranchlands, and cowboy cooking shows a fair amount of exchange between the two countries. Many of the cookies (cocineros in Spanish) working on the huge ranches of Texas came from nearby Chihuahuan Mexico, and Tex-Mex flavors have nearly always spiced up the food of the cowboys. This gooey appetizer is thick with cheese, chiles, and chili-heavy Mexican sausage. It’s a simple way to sample the influence of the cocineros.
CHORIZO CON QUESO

Filed Under: Food Talk