TV’s ‘Cast Iron Cowboy’ Set Up His Western Chuckwagon On Clearmont Ranch

Wendy Auzqui raises about 700 sheep a year on the third-generation Auzqui Ranch, but a childhood encounter with mutton had her fairly convinced that lamb would never be what’s for dinner ever again.

Until, that is, chuckwagon cook Kent Rollins rolled onto the ranch east of Clearmont to film an episode for the second season of his popular television series “Cast Iron Cowboy.”

The Auzqui Ranch visit will air at 6 p.m. Monday on the Outdoor Channel. 

Rollins has long cooked for cowboys across the nation with his 1876 Studebaker chuckwagon and a wood stove he named Bertha.

He has often showcased these adventures on his YouTube channel, where he has more than 3.5 million subscribers.  

Auzqui wasn’t so sure when Rollins announced two racks of lamb were on the dinner menu. But she gave it a chance and even she had to admit it was delicious. 

Rollins agreed that lamb has earned a bad reputation thanks to long-ago mutton encounters like the one Auzqui described.

But after 38 years of cooking from a chuckwagon, feeding hungry cowboys on ranches from South Texas to northern Montana, there are few creatures he doesn’t know how to cook.

His cow camps have been visited by all manner of wild creatures over the years, from bobcats, elk and deer to rattlesnakes and alligators. The latter two, Rollins admitted, have been known to become hors d’oeuvres.

For his Basque-style dinner, Rollins double-boned two racks of lamb, creating a thicker chop instead of tiny lollipops. Then he marinated the chops with balsamic vinegar and lots of fresh herbs. 

“When you can let it soak for so long, it just adds in the flavor and makes it more tender,” Rollins said. “You season it up well, and start it on a reverse sear, then finish it on the hot end.”

Rollins glazed his lamb chops with a mint chipotle jalapeño sauce.

“We also cooked some big old loins of lamb, too, that day,” Rollins said. “And my wife, Shannon, made some smoky mac and cheese that had some green chili and some bacon in it.”

Shannon grew up in Elko, Nevada, where Basque heritage runs deep, Rollins added, so they served a cocktail from a Basque restaurant they frequent. It’s a drink called kalimotxo.

“That’s just a cheap red wine and Coke,” he said with a chuckle. “We served that to go with the dessert. To watch people eat and watch people smile and say they enjoyed the meal — that’s what cooking is all about.”

Cooking wasn’t the only part of Rollins’ visit. He also watched Auzqui work with the ranch’s world-champion border collies. 

“I got to watch a lady who puts her heart and soul into training dogs and how they work,” Rollins said. “If she could train children, the world would be a better place.”

A Pocketful Of Lint

Lamb might not have been a favorite dinner item at the Auzqui Ranch before Rollins’ visit, but sheep have been central to the family for three generations.

Wendy’s husband, John, said the ranch began with his grandfather, Arnaud Auzqui, who came to America from Spain during the Great Depression.

Arnaud was roughly 16 years old at the time with a pocketful of not much besides lint. 

“Nobody paid anything in money at that time,” John said. “They just got paid in land and livestock. You worked so many days, you got two ewes. Then he’d trade the ewes for ewe lambs, and that’s how he started his sheep herd.”

Eventually, someone paid him with some land, which gave him a place to keep his herd. 

There was no power to pump water, so it was all done by hand. They didn’t have a fancy house or even a cabin. 

They slept in sheep wagons and chopped their own firewood until they could eventually build themselves a more permanent home.

“They cut ice in the wintertime,” John said. “They made cellars to store food. They raised their own potatoes, beans and peas.”

There weren’t any phones to call family members. 

“You might not see your family for weeks or months,” John said. “You came home with a horse that you traded for, or sheep that you had to trail home on foot with your dog.” 

They played as hard as they worked, Wendy added. 

“If they could find any reason to celebrate, they drank a lot of Pisano wine and celebrated,” she said. 

Three Generations And Counting

The Auzqui Ranch today still includes about 15,000 acres of deeded land. John and Wendy are part of its third generation, with nieces and nephews who could carry it into a fourth.

Sheep and cattle complement one another on the land. The cattle graze first, followed by sheep eating what the cows left behind. 

The homes have electricity, but remote parts of the ranch rely on solar-powered wells to water livestock. Extending power lines into that country would be prohibitively expensive, John said. 

The rewards of ranch life extend beyond what the family raises. For John, that includes the open country and the dark skies at night, where he can see the Milky Way anytime he wants.

“I can’t explain how blessed we are,” he said. “We don’t have skyscrapers. We don’t have a million people living within a block of us. Our closest neighbor is a mile away. 

“Is it tough living?” he continued. “Absolutely, it’s super tough. But you do it because you love it.”

What ‘Cast Iron Cowboy’ Is All About

Rollins understands that mentality, and it’s exactly what he wants to showcase in his television series. It’s also the reason he’s been a cowboy chef for so long.

He learned to cook when he was 9 years old at his mother’s elbow.

“It was a whole lot warmer in the kitchen in January than it was on horseback,” Rollins said. “So I thought that was a good deal — until she made me wash dishes. And then I’m thinking I’m gonna go back to being a cowboy.”

After church, Rollins said his mom and other women would tie on their aprons and start cooking together Sunday after church. It was always fascinating to watch them work.

“You never seen a recipe,” he said. “They would just go to putting handfuls of this and that and there and everything. It was some of the best food ever in my life.”

A little of this and that was Rollins’ own method of cooking for many years. But as his fame rose and cookbooks happened, he had to learn a new trick — measuring things.

“You’re going to have to fix all this to where it’s measured out,” he recalled Shannon telling him in 2015 ahead of his first cookbook. “It can’t be a handful or a pinch or a little bit.”

Persistence Pays Off

Rollins resisted the idea of becoming a television personality at first.

“We had a lot of producers reach out to us in the last 10 years and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got the perfect show for you,’” he said. “And I would say, ‘No you don’t.’”

Anytime he saw an L.A. number, he would usually let it ring without answering. But one day, he was distracted and answered one of the calls. A man named Clay Wolfick pitched him on another of these “perfect” television shows. 

“I said ‘Sir, I’m gonna have to let you go. I don’t think y’all know what we’re about,’” Rollins said. 

Wolfick had done a lot of work for National Geographic and Discovery, though, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer. He just kept calling back until he got to a “yes.”

“I’m glad he was persistent,” Rollins said. “He kept calling back and I finally answered. He said, ‘You know I’m not trying to change what you do, Kent. I just want to show people what you do.’”

That’s how “Cast Iron Cowboy” was born.

Rollins likes how the show lets him showcase authentic cowboys and cattle country in places people don’t expect to find it. He’d like to take the show to all 50 states. 

“People think of Florida and they think ‘Hey it’s orange juice and Disney,’” Rollins said. “But Florida ... has lots of grass and a lot of water.”

The state boasts some of the largest single-site breeding ranches in the nation, such as the Deseret Ranches in central Florida, which spans nearly 300,000 acres and manages a herd of around 43,000 beef cows. It’s one of the largest single cow-calf ranch operations in the United States.

When Wind Is Your Sous Chef

Wyoming is one of the most beautiful states Rollins has been to, he said, although he knows from experience that his kitchen helper in the Cowboy State is often going to be the wind. 

“This wasn’t funny at the time, but it was after it was all over,” he said. “But we were in Casper at the Poison Spider Ranch. First night in, cooked supper — steak, beans, cornbread, biscuits, bread pudding with whiskey cream sauce — and it was as calm as it could be.

“Before I got the dishes washed, the wind had gone to 70 miles an hour,” he continued. “It ripped the tarp plumb off the wagon that I was using, tore it all up, and it blowed down the teepee.”

The teepee had to go back up inside a barn.

“I’ve set a teepee up in a lot of places, but I ain’t never set one up inside a barn,” Rollins said. “When you look back at it now, it was a challenge. It tore up a lot of stuff, but you’ve got to laugh at life or you ain’t never going to make it.”

Auzqui Ranch offered two bluebird days before a thunderstorm swept over the camp on the last day. Fortunately, supper was already finished. They were just cleaning up when the wind and rain arrived.

“We sort of got drowned,” Rollins said. “But that’s all part of it. When you’re a chuckwagon cook, Mother Nature’s in control.”

That means going past Plan A, B, and C to X, Y and Z. 

“Then you open up a whole new dictionary and start over,” Rollins said with a laugh.

Still, he wouldn’t trade the work or the cool places it’s taken him to, including the Auzqui Ranch in Wyoming.  

“I’ve been in places people can’t find on a GPS,” he said. “And they’ll never get to see the sunrises and sunsets that I’ve got to witness. There’s a great view out my kitchen window every day.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.