Welcome to The Pioneer Woman Cookbook Club! This month, we’re featuring Cowboy Kent Rollins: rancher, YouTuber, and cookbook author of Comfort Food The Cowboy Way: Backyard Favorites, Country Classics, and Stories from a Ranch Cook. Read on to learn about chuck wagon cooking, find out how he beat Bobby Flay, and grab a delicious gumbo recipe that will leave a crowd satisfied.
When Kent Rollins is cooking supper for a crew of cowboys, the meal often involves a 22-ounce bone-in cowboy rib eye, usually some pinto beans or baked beans with a healthy portion of barbecue sauce and quite a bit of pork. Then they go to a chili casserole and freshly baked sourdough biscuits. Finally, he’ll finish it off with bread pudding and whiskey cream sauce. “The ranchers that hire us know that we’re going to feed cowboys as good as we can and better than a lot of folks do,” Mr. Kent explains.
Mind you, this mouthwatering spread is all cooked over a wood fire. There are no knobs for raising or lowering the heat, “and you sure can’t turn a light switch on when you come into my kitchen,” Kent says. You might recognize the man in the wide-brimmed hat and horseshoe mustache as Cowboy Kent from his beloved YouTube channel. Viewers land on a page with over 2 million subscribers and he welcomes you in a warm Oklahoma accent, saying, “Come on, I’ll get the fire hot for ya.” Clad in a cooking apron and a checkered button-up, the 65-year-old seems more like that uncle with all the great stories than your typical digitally savvy viral food icon. In fact, it sounds like he was just about allergic to the internet until he met his wife and business partner, Shannon, who made him a website and email address.
In their most recent cookbook, the pair discuss how “comfort comes in many forms, from the clothes we wear to our surroundings and the food that we eat.” That’s why we wanted to feature the cowboy Cajun gumbo from Comfort Food The Cowboy Way. Anyone previously intimidated by the slow-cooked stew will find Kent’s recipe extremely approachable; the dark roux is enlivened with his cowboy Cajun spice mix and packed with veggies, andouille, and shrimp. It’s a bowl of pure comfort on a cool afternoon that Kent could eat “three times a day.”
And as you find with much of the book, a great origin story accompanies the recipe. Gumbo was utterly foreign to Kent till about 1992, when he met a Cajun man while cooking for rodeo finals in Biloxi, Mississippi. “I couldn’t understand a word he said most of the time, but he made some gumbo one afternoon when it was just me and him, and I told him that might just be the best stuff I ever had in my whole life.”
Much like Ladd Drummond, Kent works in a world lost on most, laboring at a trade that’s as old and quintessentially American as gumbo itself. Being a chuck wagon chef, he’s cooked on ranches from south Texas to Canada. The longest he’s spent at one time on a ranch was six weeks, feeding three meals a day, moving camp every two days with a team and a wagon. He cooks in environs so extreme that even Bobby Flay couldn’t handle the heat. (According to Kent, “Bobby nearly melted” when they faced off cooking chicken fried steak on Kent’s wood stove in 94-degree weather.)
Comfort Food The Cowboy Way features the meals that have brought Kent and Shannon comfort over the years. Between the pages of hearty stews and exceedingly tasty smoking and grilling recipes, you’ll also find the fascinating history of a great ranching tradition that dates back to the 1870s. And as for the gumbo, Kent and Shannon enjoy making a big celebratory pot every April before the busy season starts. But take note: “Those old Cajuns sure wouldn’t tell you nothin’, but they made me understand one thing: don’t burn the roux.”
