Interview with Kent Rollins | Faith, Family & the Feast

Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She’s just a home cook in New York city, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.

Kent Rollins: My name is Kent Rollins and we are so proud and honored to have this cookbook come out, Faith, Family and the Feast. Me and Shannon worked hard for this one. We want people to know that we all need a little more helpings of this Faith, Family and the Feast in this world today.

Suzy Chase: We could really use your insight and wisdom right now during this coronavirus pandemic. So out on the trail, naturally, you’ve been social distancing for years and you’ve also had to plan your grocery list very, very carefully because you go out on the range miles from civilization for what? Weeks is it?

Kent Rollins: Yeah, sometimes five, six weeks at a time. Darling, we’ve always been people that learned how to improvise. When I was growing up, we were 14 miles from town and you didn’t just go off to town and think, “Hey, I’m going to buy this,” or “I’m going to buy that,” because they might not have it. My mother taught me, “This may call for this in a recipe, but there’s something that can take its place and you’ve already got it.” And Shannon used to tell me that. She said, “I think that’s why you did so good on Chop Grill Masters is because you learned to improvise and get by with stuff you didn’t even know what it was. And it’s that way today for folks. I know when in some places that there’s stores that… I won’t say they’re not fully stocked, it’s just that they’ve run out of stock and supply and demand sometimes gets a little of ahead of itself, but there’s so many things that you can use to take the place of something else.

Kent Rollins: One of the greatest ingredients that I ever found out that could help a lot was mayonnaise. I’ve put mayonnaise in many a recipe that called for eggs. And it’s hard to fry mayonnaise for breakfast. Now, I ain’t done that yet. If you’re having mayonnaise and bacon, I thank them cowboys might’ve run me out at camp. But we made a lot of cakes with it, put it in a lot of bread. And that’s another deal. We use a lot of sourdough and sourdough starter can take the place of any recipe that calls for milk or buttermilk so it’s a time to get in the kitchen darling and just have a good time and we’ll all get through.

Suzy Chase: Now what about the cheaper cuts of meat? What could we do with those?

Kent Rollins: There’s a lot of cuts of meat that I’ll call them value cuts and you can get some… for better lack of words, I’ll just say tougher cuts of meat. And that can be some rounds, some bottom rounds, some top round. A lot of stuff that they might cube and make tender, you can still take that same slice of meat and go ahead and cook that down. Maybe stew it down if you need to make a stew, but it’s really good if you can make you some mushroom gravy to put on that and just make a smothered steak. And you can lay that on a piece of that sourdough bread, cover it up with gravy and meat. I think you’d eat like a king.

Suzy Chase: So food insecurity has to be weighing on people’s minds right , with people losing their jobs and schools shut down and cities are basically closed. So give us five grocery items you think we should be buying if we’re struggling financially.

Kent Rollins: Well, I think to something that’s non-perishable, if you can find them. There’s a lot of ways you can use a can of beans and that’s not just beans right out of the can. You can mix something with it; whether it be ground turkey, ground pork, ground beef and you can get by. But we’re always trying to remember that we always have in our house is some type of protein and I prefer that to be beef, but we take what we can get and most of the time we’re very fortunate to have it all. But also coffee, flour, sugar and if you can find dry beans, dry pasta, that stuff will keep forever. It’ll stay on the shelf forever. And just today Suzy, there’s a lot of folks out there that are looking for something they can make a recipe with and sardines is very plentiful in our little grocery store. So instead of using salmon to make a salmon patty, you can use that same can of sardines. Just make sure you drain that oil off of it good. And if you don’t have an egg, put mayonnaise in there. It’ll work.

Suzy Chase: That’s a good tip. So chicken is cheap and we can prepare chicken infinite ways. What should we be looking for in chicken? The whole chicken or pieces?

Kent Rollins: Well, if you know how to cut a chicken up, you really, if you’re trying to buy the whole pieces, it’s cheaper just to buy a whole chicken and cut it up yourself. We usually try to buy chicken when it’s on sale because it does freeze well it’s… Thighs are usually pretty cheap. If you can buy some thighs and some legs, hey them things, they make great chicken and dumplings also, which goes back to that sourdough starter and that sourdough bread.

Suzy Chase: What are your thoughts on bouillon?

Kent Rollins: Bouillon. I’ve used a lot of powdered stuff in my life and I do love some beef bullion and chicken both. There’s another one out there that I’ve come to be a fan of and that’s con pollo, which is a Spanish version of some chicken broth granules. And it works well too, but you can make your own beef stock with that stuff or chicken stock and it’s just good as gold.

Suzy Chase: So rice combined with beans is a complete protein. How should we be seasoning this?

Kent Rollins: Well, if it’s at my house and we’re having rice and beans and you can probably find them, I love to use some dried ancho chilies. And all you got to do to any kind of dried pepper like that is either crush it really good and use or just steam it really good, boil it in water and then take it out and run it through the blender or just mash it really well and put it back in there with them beans and rice, and it’s better than Taco Bell.

Suzy Chase: What do you recommend we cook big batches of to freeze?

Kent Rollins: Well, if you can get an old tough cut of meat, and I don’t mean old as an old age, but if you can just get an any tough cut of meat or maybe you can get the end of the chuck roast or maybe… there’s a part of that on the hindquarter back around there that you can get. Stew is so easy to make and it doesn’t have to have all the ingredients that we used to think we have. If you can just get by with throwing an onion in there with that, letting it cook, maybe some of them beans too. Peppers, jalapenos, it freezes really well. Chili’s the same way. And you can make that out of anything. We’re going to make it with beef or venison or elk, something like that. But it can be made out of turkey, it can be made out of chicken and it also freezes well. But we try to make enough big old pot of pinto beans or something like that, that we can freeze and they’ll last us a long time.

Suzy Chase: So your cookbook is called Faith, Family and the Feast. In terms of faith and hope, how are you dealing with this scary time?

Kent Rollins: Well darling, ever day to us is a holiday. And we get up every morning, we give thanks to the good Lord for the breath we get to take in our lungs and the things that we get to do. I never take them for granted. And I’m not for sure what’s going to happen with all this going around. And I know it affects a lot of folks and my heart goes out to each and every one of them. But you have to remember too, it will have a silver lining. I’ve never seen the darkness stay. The sun always shines. God’s going to part them clouds and sunshine will rain down again. There will be smiles on people’s faces. You won’t be social distance. You be able to get around and visit folks. But Hey, there’s a lot of you out there right now that’s listening that you’re, in a hotel room, you’re at an apartment, you’re at your house with your family, but you’re surrounded with them.

Kent Rollins: And that’s family and that’s friends. And there’s phones and there’s computers and you can stay in touch. And let’s just all be smart, let’s be safe, but count them blessings because there are a lot of folks out there putting their life on the line for us. We just need to be mindful of that.

Suzy Chase: Well, I’m just so grateful for your advice. Thanks so much.

Kent Rollins: Why thank you Suzy. It is a pleasure and God bless you darling, so much.

Suzy Chase: You too. For more Cookery by the Book and to see what recipe I made out of this cookbook, head on over to Cookery by the Book on Instagram. Now on with the show. Back in 2015 you were my second cookbook podcast, with A Taste of Cowboy; another cookbook you wrote with your wife, Shannon. I think you and Shannon are the only cookbook authors out there right now, who can bring stories of the American West to life.

Kent Rollins: Well, I was raised a ranching cowboy and we lived in a very small rural community that values were always strong and food was always good. And when I decided that I would make this my passion and my lifestyle, I was very blessed to have a beautiful young woman come along and tell me that, “Hey, I think we can do this together.” And we try to create something that’s in mother nature’s kitchen that anybody can do inside or outside. But it’s always been such a blessing, Suzy, for us to be able to go on big ranches and cook for working cowboys and see the things we’ve got to see because they will truly take your breath away from you.

Suzy Chase: So a little bit of background on you. You were raised in the Southwest corner of Oklahoma, in a place called Hollis and do you still live there. You’ve been a cowboy all your life, but at a certain point you changed gears a little bit and started cooking for Elk hunters and you’ve been cooking ever since. Cowboys have played an important role in America’s culinary traditions, dating back to the 1700s. Tell me about your mom. How did she encourage your love of cooking?

Kent Rollins: We always told ourselves… I remember momma telling us when we were little, “We may not have much, but by the faith in God and the blessings that we have, we’re going to put it on the table and it will nourish our bodies and we will think it is a feast.” So I always took great pride in and what mama would try to teach me in the kitchen when I was young to cook. I can remember the first thing I ever made and the recipes in the cookbook, it was old fashioned chocolate cake. And I can remember standing on a stool Suzy, and stirring that batter with one of them old mixers. And I’m thinking, “This is the best thing ever. I like cooking.” You can sort of dip your finger in there once in a while and get you a bite. But I didn’t know at that time that you had to wash dishes also or I might have quit a little.

Kent Rollins: But I seen my mother start with very little and make it into something great. I think that’s one reason that I learned to improvise so well because we lived 12 miles from town at the time and if you didn’t have it, you wasn’t just going to run to the store and get it. You found out something that would work in its place.

Suzy Chase: Was she born in Hollis too?

Kent Rollins: No, she was born over about 70 miles from here, North of Granite, Oklahoma, or I’d say 60… probably in a little lake, creek community. And then she moved to Amarillo later on in life. And I can always remember telling the story. And this was the way my mother was. She said, “We were so poor that when we moved to Amarillo, they said you had to have shoes to go to school.” And she told herself, “I’ve never had a new pair of shoes.” Well, my mother never did go to school neither at that time, but she never let there keep that from her. She ended up getting an education, but it was one of them deals to where she always told me, “You have to put heart into everything you do, whether you’re barefooted or got shoes on.”

Suzy Chase: As we talked about before, I grew up in Kansas and even though I live in New York city, my heart is still in Kansas. I love the Prairie more than any place else in the entire world. Describe stepping out of the cowboy teepee at 5:00 AM in the morning, or I think probably earlier, and the stars are close enough you can touch and the simplicity and beauty of it all.

Kent Rollins: It’s a great thing to me. And most of our mornings on a ranch do start very early; from 2:45 to four o’clock in the morning, depending on where you’re at and what season it is; spring or fall. But when you can step out of that teepee and you’re in 300,000 acres and there’s no lights, there’s no cars, there’s no sound but what is the sound of mother nature and maybe horses or cattle stirring around somewhere and the night creatures; the hoot owls, the coyotes, but you when you can look up at them stars and they are so bright, it just sort of gives you a very peaceful feeling that you’re in the right place. And I never take for granted any of them mornings that I get to see and I cherish every one of them.

Suzy Chase: There aren’t any grocery stores out on the range. I imagine you have to be so organized with your grocery list so you don’t forget an ingredient, but you also have to be creative with ingredients. Right?

Kent Rollins: Yeah. I can remember telling Shannon, one of the first big ranches she cooked on, we were 70 miles from the nearest town. And I told her, I said, “We will make a grocery list and we will make a menu. We’re going to be there five weeks.” The ranch people there buy the groceries, put it at headquarters when we stock up about once a week. But I said, “We will go over this menu time after time before we ever get there and we’ll add three to four days to it because mother nature is really in control here.” You don’t know if you going to get rained out, blowed out. Something could happen to where you have to stay in four to five days more. So you take extra. So when you get out there and you’re on one them recipes and you think, “Man, I ain’t got no buttermilk. I wished I had some.” Well that’s when you learn to do that ol’ milk and lemon juice or you can add a little milk and vinegar and you make your own.

Kent Rollins: We got pretty close to running out of eggs one morning and we had just enough, but I can remember telling Shannon, I said, “If you’ll look across there, it looks like it might be about four or five miles over there, there’s a tree.” I said, “We’ll trot over there and see if there’s a bird nest.” And she said, “Are you serious?” And I said, “No. We do have enough eggs to get through on this one.” But you do learn to what will take the place of some things or you get creative and you think, “Hey, I’m going to add this to this just see what happens.” Cowboys were always great taste testers. And if their plate come back clean and they went back for third and fourth helpings, hey, you knew it was a keeper.

Suzy Chase: You’re known for mastering the historic way of cooking with the chuckwagon. The first time you ate off a chuckwagon was when you were 10. Can you describe this?

Kent Rollins: We were across the river over… north of Quanah, Texas and I was just really thinking that I was in a land among giants. All of these old timers were my hero; my dad and all this old cowboys that he’d run around with. And they had a wagon parked out there by this branding pen. And I don’t ever remember knowing the cook’s name. He was sort of a little, overweight… His old back was pretty well-bent from all the years, I guess, he’d been bending over, picking up iron, but I can remember the smell of the coffee, one of the first things. Coffee was a staple that stayed on all day long, all night. The next morning, everything was there. But when you get in line, there was such a etiquette that went on to be at a place like that. You didn’t go under the fly of the wagon, which was the tarp, unless you were asked.

Kent Rollins: Everybody got in line, everybody took their hat off. You blessed the food and then you’d eat. And I was thinking, “This guy’s a pretty good cook.” I know you’re not supposed to complain. He wasn’t a good a cook as I thought my mother was. And I told my dad later that day that, I said, “This guy, he don’t cook as good as momma.” And I remember my dad smiling looking at me too, and he said, “He don’t look good as momma neither.” So, but it was something I learned. No matter what job that cook does, he’s going to try to make it, if he’s a good cook, edible, very nourishing and hot and on time if he can.

Suzy Chase: How do you keep things hot?

Kent Rollins: Well, we’re pretty well blessed with old Bertha and that’s a wood stove we got. She weighs about 345 pounds. And it’s got sort of a lip on the backside, a folding tray that comes off, that’s off the heat, but it’ll still keep something warm for as long as you need it. Or if it’s in a Dutch oven too, you can just sit it on a taller trivet, which keeps it off the ground and you just put a little heat under it and you can keep it warm. And I’ve always told Shannon and I always remembered too, when you’re on a ranch and it comes time for that noon meal, you could be from 11:00 to 3:00, most of the time they’re pretty good about coming in, but a cow don’t own a watch and she don’t care if she makes her enough trouble that you don’t even get lunch.

Suzy Chase: So in 1996 the governor of Oklahoma named you the official chuckwagon cook of Oklahoma. So you have an 1876 Studebaker chuckwagon. What’s the story behind this?

Kent Rollins: Well, I can remember looking for a wagon when I got through guiding elk hunters one year. I thought, “I think a man might could make a living going back and just cooking for some of them ranches that I used to visit and to work on.” And I got to looking for a wagon. And at the time I was looking, they’re not real plentiful in some places. And I found an old wagon that was in Spur, Texas and it was in pretty good shape. I ended up having to do some work on it, but it had come out of a barn and was reassembled. The origin was 1876 and it was a Studebaker chuckwagon. Studebakers were known for their great workmanship, but also they had a really, really good seat that had a lot of good iron work to it. And the old seat that was on this wagon had just rotted away.

Kent Rollins: The iron was not even salvageable, which is sort of a treasurer if you can get a Studebaker wagon that has the original seat. But we rebuilt some of it, keep working on it. You can’t just go down to Jiffy Lube and say, “Hey, I need y’all to change the oil on this and work on it.” It’s not like that, but it’s one of them deals where if you keep it in good working order, it’ll pay you back every time you use it. Just like cast iron.

Suzy Chase: Are there any other Studebaker chuckwagons out there today or do you have the last one?

Kent Rollins: No, there’s quite a few really, when you get to looking. I have several friends that have some Studebaker wagons. There’s two in Missouri that I know of and they were the Cadillac of wagons. Abraham Lincoln had a Studebaker wagon, a little carriage. When he got to the white house, he requested one. So they have been very popular for a long time.

Suzy Chase: You enjoy writing and Shannon is a great editor. Talk a little bit about your process and collaboration.

Kent Rollins: Well, I remember when we got together, Suzy, I was telling her all these old ranch stories. We’d be going down the road that we’d been catered in somewhere and I’d be telling her stories and she said, “You’re going to write a blog.” And I said, “I don’t know if I know how to spell that or even know what it is.” And she’d get me in there on the computer and I’d be writing these stories. And she’d say, “Okay, just email that to me.” She’d be in another room and I had to send it in there and she’d say, “Okay, it’s 1100 words. I really like where you’re going, but now tell me the story like it really happened. I want to feel it from the heart.” And I remember trying to write stuff in school and I made a D in speech class when I was in high school because I didn’t like to get up in front of people. I didn’t like to really write things down.

Kent Rollins: But my dad fought a very long battle with cancer, which finally beat him. Writing was a way that I could deal with it. And when Shannon come along and would tell me, “I want to hear your voice in it. I want people to know they’re sitting down right here beside you.” And it is something that… I guess an old man told me one time we were cooking for them and then we had to do a little entertainment with it, he said, “You’re the only person I know that can burn your food and your years at the same time and we still enjoy it.

Suzy Chase: So I read somewhere that Rux Martin, your famed cookbook editor once said, “I’m looking for authors who have a lifetime of experience and have something fresh to say.” That is you and Shannon to a T. How did you get hooked up with Rux Martin?

Kent Rollins: Well first of all, let me tell you we dearly love Rux and she is a mess. She’s funny as she can be. We did Chopped Grill Masters. It’s probably been nearly seven, eight years ago now. I can’t even remember when it came out. And we were in Shannon’s hometown in Elko, Nevada. And we were sort of having a watch party. It’d come out on a Sunday. And the next day, the phone rang off the hook. There was producers calling here, there, right and left and wanting you to do something. But we had a message from a lady in New York city, Janice Danu, who was a book agent. So I called her and she was from originally, from the Nashville area and she sort of understood what I was and what it was sort of about. And she said, “Do you have a cookbook?” And I said, “We have a self-published book, ma’am, a paperback.” She said, “What you need is one of them hardbound, full-color cookbooks. Because,” she said, “I know it would be a treasure.”

Kent Rollins: And I remember she laughed at me. I said, “Ma’am, I can’t afford one of them.” And she said, “You don’t have to.” And we got hooked up with Rux the very first time that we went to New York City to present the proposal. And I told Shannon when we walked out of there, I said, “That Rux Martin is good people. She understands what this is about and I think she will do us a great job.” I’m glad they got the bid. It’s always been a blessing. We’ve laughed back and forth with Rux for a long time.

Suzy Chase: I’m going to read the first part of your touching dedication at the beginning of this cookbook you wrote, “We dedicate this book to the little places; the ones you may have traveled through going somewhere else. Where Sunday socials after church offer not only five-star dining, but more importantly, fellowship.” We don’t talk much about fellowship much anymore. I’m curious to hear how fellowship shows up in your life.

Kent Rollins: Well, it was always a central place was at a table, when we were growing up. You gathered family around that table. You had great food at that table. There was conversation at that table. Now when you go places, you go to a table, people seem to have a cell phone more in their hand than they do a fork. And I think it’s time the world come back to a place to where, “Hey, let’s sit down, let’s visit, let’s bless the food and let’s talk about family. Let’s talk about the good things in life.” And fellowship is not only just around the table, we’ve done it around so many old camps that we were in, visiting with Cowboys and everything else, but the world could solve a lot of problems and be a better place if everybody just took time to sit down at a table and visit.

Suzy Chase: A Cowboys day starts early and ends late. What are your evenings like after dinner, out on the range?

Kent Rollins: Well, a lot of times the evening meal would be at 6:00 and especially if it’s in the spring of the year, when it’s light till 7:00, 7:30 anyways. So you get the dishes done and everybody’s sort of just plumbed through by… we’ll say 7:00. And it’s really nice just to pull up a chair and me and Shannon can sit there. And sure, there’s a lot of visiting that we do with cowboys, but to be able to just take that day in and say, “This was another great day above the grass that God has given us.” But to hear the sounds, to watch a sun go down. It didn’t go down behind a tree, it didn’t go down behind a building. You got to watch it disappear, plum out of sight. The colors that are painted in them skies out there are some of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in life. And it just sort of takes your breath away every time you do get to see one.

Suzy Chase: So jerky is a road warrior’s survival snack. How do you make jerky without a dehydrator?

Kent Rollins: Well, I can remember when we were young, especially if we raised our own beef. And at times, daddy and them processed our own beef. But there would always be those pieces that momma would think, “Hey, these would make stew meat,” or, “These might make something. They’re a little tough.” But I can remember her making jerky the very first time in an old oven that… Well, it was a antique before she had it. But she always cracked that door just a little to let some of that moisture out of there. And the aroma that come through the house was some of the best thing ever. Because we hadn’t been to stores and had jerky. We didn’t know they had truck stops hardly.

Kent Rollins: So we thought that was the greatest things; that my mother had probably invented one of the best things in the world. But as we got to going around and traveling, we didn’t know they sold it in little cellophane packages that you could buy it. But you do not have to have a dehydrator if you’ll follow this recipe in the book because it’s so easy. The secret really is letting that meat marinade a long time, which is at least 24 hours. And hey, it is some good eating. And you can spice it up if you’d like change it, put more red pepper flakes in there. And it has got me down the road many a day.

Suzy Chase: Earlier this week I made your recipe for green onion and ham scallop potatoes on page 136. Can you describe this recipe and what is the secret ingredient?

Kent Rollins: This is something we always had on our table at any special occasion, especially… I would say most of the time it was Easter. But my mother would throw this out there and man, oh man, it’d be good. But Shannon, she sort of took this to a new level. My mother really never did put ham in hers and when Shan did this… but the secret ingredient to me, Suzy, is the dip. The French onion dip that goes in there makes this so much more creamier and the flavors that it brings out… This is a happy meal that don’t come in a sack and to me, I don’t need nothing else. If I’ve got a spoon and one of these in front of me, I can eat the whole panful.

Suzy Chase: Totally, because sometimes scallop potatoes can be bland, but I think the dip really brings some zing to it.

Kent Rollins: Oh it does. And when you can add the mozzarella, because my mother at times, wouldn’t put cheese on hers and sometimes she did. It was mostly a milk and flour substance going along with salt and pepper and some onion. But when you take the ham, the green onion and then you blend that dip in there with it again, it is so good.

Suzy Chase: And it’s a full meal. You don’t need anything else.

Kent Rollins: Yeah. If you just sit the pan down in front of you and get you four or five big spoons and have everybody gather around, you’re in pretty good shape.

Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. Aside from this cookbook, what is your all time favorite cookbook and why?

Kent Rollins: I would say our first cookbook, A Taste of Cowboy, because it was the first one that we had put out, but my sister and… I guess I can call it a cookbook. We were mentioning Cindy before she was born of cerebral palsy and we ended up… Momma got her a typewriter. And an uncle of ours fixed her a cover that went on the keyboard and my sister could type with her thumb. And she typed recipes that my mother, she’d pin up there and she’d type them. And they were just in a little green binder Suzy. And it was just called Cindy’s Recipes. And these were things that had been around our house forever, but also aunts, neighbors, people that had come to family reunions, stuff that just… you knew was a cherished dish. And to have that and still have it now that my sister’s created it, it is a treasure.

Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web, YouTube and social media.?

Kent Rollins: On that what thing I call the Google, you can just type in Kentrollins.com and it’ll come up. We have a great website and Shannon has took me a long way into the modern age. We have a great YouTube channel and it’s just Cowboy Kent Rollins as well. We were approaching a million subscribers now. We have a video that comes out every Wednesday at 2:30 central. And this is really where the title of the cookbook sort of stemmed from was from our YouTube family because we have such a large faith-based veteran America-supporting bunch of people that I’ve ever known. And I’m touched Suzy by the emails we get, the letters we get.

Kent Rollins: We’ve got flags that have flew over aircraft carriers that service men and women have sent us. It’s very touching. When I pay them tribute at the end of every video, I do it because I honor them, but they honor us so much in the sacrifices that they made. But when they send us something like that, if you want to see a cowboy cry… They have wrote some letters that touched my heart so much. We are proud to be on social media. We’re there on Instagram, we’re there on Twitter and all of it is just Cowboy Kent Rollins. It’ll get you there.

Suzy Chase: As your mother used to say, “In life and in cooking, we all require love and someone to ride along with.” This has been so wonderful, Kent. Thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast again.

Kent Rollins: Well Suzy, you are like family to us, honey. And you are welcome in our camp anytime.

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