Cooking the Cowboy Way
Recipes Inspired by Campfires, Chuck Wagons, and Ranch Kitchens
by Grady Spears, June Naylor
Price: $29.99
ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-7392-1
ISBN-10: 0-7407-7392-5
Format: Hardcover
Size: 8 x 10 in.
Page Count: 240 pages

The Texas Cowboy Kitchen
by Grady Spears, June Naylor
Price: $19.99
ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-6973-3
ISBN-10: 0-7407-6973-1
Format: Paperback
Size: 11 x 9 in.
Page Count: 228 pages

“Campfire, chuck wagon, and ranch cooking is a very distinctive way of cooking and one that I love. There’s nothing quite like the experience, and the flavors, of cooking bacon and eggs, or a steak over an open campfire. The book is a wonderful compendium of this style of cooking. Chef, restaurant owner, and author Grady Spears explores this way of cooking by highlighting working ranches, and their food and recipes across North America. Each chapter is devoted to a different ranch in such states as Texas, Arizona, Missouri, Florida and Alberta, Canada. He includes cooking secrets, photos and stories about the cowboy way of life. While I was reading through it, it made me want to pack up my cast iron pan, and my camping gear, grab my horse, and hit the open road. I have everything but the horse. Maybe car camping is in the near future instead. I cooked several recipes from the book and they were all a huge success. The recipes were well-written, easy to follow and pleased several friends that came over to eat them to the point that they asked for the recipes for themselves.” –Cooking ‘Food & Wine’ http://bit.ly/9qLyCH
“If you associate cowboy cooking with barbeque, beef, and beans, you’re in for one Texas-sized surprise. In his latest cookbook [Cooking The Cowboy Way] with June Naylor, Grady Spears travels North America in search of food that celebrates what he calls the “cowboy way,” a lifestyle born of life in the saddle or on the trail. The cowboy-turned-chef visits kitchens from Florida to Texas to Alberta, Canada, gathering a varied, if not eclectic, collection of recipes inspired by campfires, chuck wagons, and ranch kitchens.” ––Cowboys & Indians http://bit.ly/dAMoeF
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“While categorized as a cookbook The Texas Cowboy Kitchen is so much more than that - it’s a visual history of the Old West thanks to a series of marvelous full-page photos by famed cowboy photographer, Erwin E. Smith; it’s an informative, smile provoking collection of commentary about cowboys, their lives and the famed Chisholm Trail; and a selection of over 100 mouth-watering recipes that have withstood the test of time and culinary fads.” ––Lunch.com http://www.lunch.com/reviews/UserReview-The_Texas_Cowboy_Kitchen-1307340-12730-COMFORT_FOOD_FROM_A_COWBOY_S_KITCHEN.html
“While categorized as a cookbook The Texas Cowboy Kitchen is so much more than that - it’s a visual history of the Old West thanks to a series of marvelous full-page photos by famed cowboy photographer, Erwin E. Smith; it’s an informative, smile provoking collection of commentary about cowboys, their lives and the famed Chisholm Trail; and a selection of over 100 mouth-watering recipes that have withstood the test of time and culinary fads.” ––Lunch.com http://www.lunch.com/data/The_Texas_Cowboy_Kitchen-1307340-Reviews-1-1.html
Life in the saddle, on the trail, and in the outback has forged a style of living that cowboy-turned-chef Grady Spears calls the Cowboy Way. It’s a life where boots and hats are much more about function than fashion. It means that when you eat, drink, and breathe the tending of cattle, raising beef is not just some exercise where loss is charted on a spreadsheet. When your days are filled with the smells of fresh-cut hay and the creaking of worn leather, when you wake up with the sun and to the smell of coffee on the boil and biscuits from the chuck wagon, you are living the Cowboy Way.
Because cowboys spend long days outdoors in every kind of weather, sometimes for weeks at a time, satiating a cowboy’s hunger is a challenge for ranch cooks from Texas to Florida, north into Canada, and south of the border into Mexico. This collection of almost one hundred recipes is not only the result of Grady’s journey across North America, but also the cowboy’s journey through history.
In Cooking the Cowboy Way, you’ll have a ringside seat at the rodeo as Grady wrestles down new recipes from some incredible cowboy cooks and kitchen wranglers who know what hungry cow folks want to eat. And in the process, you’ll be carried away by the magic of starry nights by the campfire and seduced by the heritage of the chuck wagon and ranch kitchens, where the menus are still stoked by the traditions of the Old West just as they have been for a century or more.
From Cooking the Cowboy Way: Recipes Inspired by Campfires, Chuck Wagons, and Ranch Kitchens by Grady Spears and June Naylor
Serves 4
Like every rancher I’ve ever met, John Elick loves to grill a big steak for supper. We had some ancho chiles—those are dried poblano chiles—on hand, so we added them to the steak rub we made up when we were cooking together. It added a great smoky flavor.
4 (10-ounce) New York strips
3 to 4 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 dried ancho chile, seeds and stem removed
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup kosher salt
Wipe the steaks dry with a paper towel, then rub them with the vegetable oil. Place the ancho chile in a food processor and pulse until the chile is shredded as finely as possible. Combine the shredded chile with the brown sugar and kosher salt in a bowl to create a rub. With your hands, coat the steaks with the rub. Prepare a charcoal, gas, or wood-burning grill; over medium-hot, ash-covered coals, grill the steaks to desired doneness, 11 to 13 minutes for medium rare, or an internal temperature of 145°F. Turn the steaks once during cooking.
From Cooking the Cowboy Way: Recipes Inspired by Campfires, Chuck Wagons, and Ranch Kitchens by Grady Spears and June Naylor
Serves 6 to 8
In Texas, we like to soak beans overnight in water, then start cooking early in the morning and slow cook all day. This is a great Sunday meal, with a big pan of cornbread or hoecakes on the side.
1 pound dried pinto beans
4 ounces salt pork
3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced kosher salt
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 sliced jalapeño, optional
½ cup chopped cilantro leaves, optional
Rinse the beans and remove any stones or dirt. Cut the pork into thin strips and rinse. Place the beans in a large pot and cover with water. Add the pork, garlic, salt, and chili powder, and boil over medium heat for about 2 hours, or until the beans are tender. The beans should always be covered with water. If needed, add more hot water while cooking, to cover. When the beans are tender, add the sliced jalapeño and the chopped cilantro leaves. Allow the beans to sit for about 30 minutes to absorb these flavors before serving.
If you like, you can speed up the process by soaking the beans in water overnight. Drain before beginning the cooking process and add fresh water. Be careful not to add the salt too early or the beans will become too tough.
The Cowboy Way
Tom Perini has traveled from California to Vermont with his 1890s chuck wagon. He’s been a spokesman for Pace Picante Sauce for several years and makes frequent visits at food events to give educational tours of the chuck wagon, showing people how the hardworking cowboys ate, and how
inventive chuck wagon cooks prepared meals on the trail, back in the day.
From Cooking the Cowboy Way: Recipes Inspired by Campfires, Chuck Wagons, and Ranch Kitchens by Grady Spears and June Naylor
Makes 12 muffins
Brad makes muffins and cookies just about every day at Homeplace Ranch, and guests help themselves to sweets and coffee anytime they like. We made these muffins with fresh apples for breakfast; try Golden Delicious or Red Delicious apples in yours.
1 egg
1 cup milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon sea salt
3 teaspoons cinnamon
2 ½ medium-sized apples, cored, peeled, and grated
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter 12 regular (1/3-cup) muffin cups and set aside.
Combine the egg, milk, and oil in a bowl and mix by hand with a spoon or fork. In another bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, and mix with a fork. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into the center. Mix lightly, then add the grated apples. Mix just until all the ingredients are moistened. Spoon the batter equally among the prepared muffin cups. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of one muffin comes away clean.
Note: For blueberry muffins, substitute 1 cup of blueberries for the apples. For cranberry muffins, substitute 1 cup of cranberries and the zest of 2 oranges for the apples, and substitute 1/2 cup of orange juice for half of the milk.
Native Texan and cowboy-turned-chef Grady Spears has created cowboy menus for restaurants he co-owned in Fort Worth, Texas; Granbury, Texas; and Beverly Hills, California, as well as for the Bush family at the Texas Governor’s Mansion. He has written five Grady’s cookbooks. He owns Grady’s Restaurant in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.
Award-winning journalist and author June Naylor has covered food, dining, and travel for more than twenty years. She is a frequent contributor to a number of Texas newspapers and magazines, as well as to national periodicals and Web sites. With Grady, June wrote The Texas Cowboy Kitchen. A native Texan, she lives in Fort Worth, Texas.
Grady Spears: At home on the range
The Texas Cowboy Kitchen is a full-color cookbook featuring cowboy-turned-chef Grady Spears’s modern twist on over 100 classic cowboy dishes ranging from appetizers to desserts and more.
Gather ’round the chuckwagon, pull up a hay bale, and dig into The Texas Cowboy Kitchen (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $19.95) by cowboy-turned-chef Grady Spears with June Naylor.
This unique, full-color cookbook, now available in paperback, features Grady’s modern twist on more than 100 classic cowboy dishes ranging from appetizers to desserts. The innovative recipes are satisfying like their old-time counterparts, easy to make, and often accompanied by interesting notes about the ingredients and culinary history.
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