Tag Archives: recipe

Don’t burn the biscuits!!

Chuck Wagon Cooking, ,

Second only to nutty-flaky pie crust in terms of the heartache of non-lightness is the almighty biscuit!  Chuckwagon cooks are judged by several criteria, and one of these is whether your biscuits can be used as ammunition, or hockey pucks, or if they are light and flaky!  My own were pretty much in the door stop category until I was saved by my soul brother – cowboy cook Carl Hawkins.

Now my mother-in-law emphasizes the importance of working fast and keeping the ingredients cold, much like working in pie dough.  Carl just says, “don’t mess with it too much!”  He put me to work early one Sunday morning, saying

“okay, get out your flour and shortening and you’re going to make a couple batches of biscuits!”

In a cold bowl he had me dump a cup of flour, then add two tablespoons of baking powder, half a teaspoon of salt and blend it with a fork.  Next he had me cut in a tablespoon of shortening until the dough looked grainy, kind of like cornmeal.  Finally, we added about half a cup of buttermilk and kept working with the fork until the sticky dough just began to come away from the sides of the bowl, it looked too wet.  We dumped in out on a lightly floured surface, flipped it over, rolled it out to a half inch thick and cut out rounds with a juice glass.  I put them in a well greased dutch oven and after about fifteen minutes at somewhere in the vicinity of 400°F they floated out of the pan!

Don’t burn the biscuits — you’ll never hear the end of it!

The Crust

Chuck Wagon Cooking, ,

Okay, so I promised pie crust!

The hallmark of a chuckwagon cook is to be “fast and nasty.”  Don’t take the word ‘nasty’ literally.  Nowhere is fast more important than in pie crust and biscuit making.  

All the ingredients must be cold, and must be kept cold until they go into the oven (dutch or kitchen).  My mom had cold hands (warm heart!) so she worked the shortening with her fingertips.  My mom-in-law and Aunt Betty used a pair of butter knives, and Carlos’ grandma used a dough cutter, so their hands wouldn’t warm up the shortening.  You see, the thing that makes the dough flaky is the thin small plates of unmelted shortening that evaporate and leave air pockets between the cooked dough.  

To make one pie crust, heat the oven to 400°F (that’s at least 10 coals under and 14 over the lid on a dutch oven).  Then pour a cup of cold unsifted flour in the cold crock and add a teaspoon of sugar and a fourth of a teaspoon of salt and stir them together.  Mix in a third of a cup of shortening (cold Crisco or cold leaf lard) and cut it in, until no piece of dough is larger than a pea.  It’ll look a little like cornmeal.  Then add about 3½ to 4 tablespoons of ice water and cut it in with a fork, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.  Dump the dough ball out onto a lightly floured board, mash it down and flip it.  Then use a rolling pin to flatten it out to a disc larger than your pie pan (probably about 13 inches).

Roll the dough up on the rolling pin, and unroll it onto the pie pan, and work it down into the pan.  Cut off the extra, and pinch the rim (you can fold some of the overlap over the edge to add thickness).  The pinching makes the dough stick to the pan, and will become your trademark.  Mom used a thumb and two fingers.  Bake it at 350°F (turn the oven down from 400°F) for 15-20 minutes, until it turns golden and the smell is good, not burned!

Put whatever you want in it.  Some things bake in the crust, others get put in an already baked crust.  It depends.  Remember, keep it cold and work fast!

Qualified

Chuck Wagon Cooking, , , , , , , , , ,

“we’ve been doing so much, with so little, for so long, we’re now qualified to do everything with nothing!”  -unknown

A cowboy was once described as an appetite on two legs, by a chuck wagon cook.  The cook’s job is to fill the human machinery of a ranch.  Cooks and cowboys are usually busiest during spring and fall when the herd work goes on.  Often extra hands are needed to round up and pen and sort cattle.  Then the roping, branding, vaccinating and various unmentionable surgical procedures take place. 

Wes strode up to the cook to ask what was for supper.

“What’s it to you!?” barked the grouchy cook.

“I’m so hungry, I’m weak, so weak, I’d have to stand in the same place twice just to cast a shadow!”

One specialty of camp cooks is dessert, often made from limited resources, as the camp is often not conveniently located near a Kroger’s or H.E.B.  So the food is often quite inventive.  My favorite along this line is Vinegar Pie.  Sure don’t sound appetizing, but if you try it, you’ll like it.  We were introduced to it by Charlie, our ninety three year old friend who grew up in Swisher County, in the Panhandle.

Put ¼ cup of vinegar (apple cider) in two cups of water and bring to a boil.  Sift ½ cup of flour, a cup of sugar and ¼ tsp of salt, and stir it slowly into the boiling liquid.  Cook it down to pudding consistency, stirring all the while.  Take it off the fire, add a teaspoon of vanilla and let it sit and cool for half an hour, pour it into a pie crust and let it set up.

We’ll talk about pie crust later! Enjoy!