September 3, 2008

Chuckwagon Hits the Trail
Rod McGuire heads to national cookoff in Texas Sept. 4 through 7

By MARK GIBSON
of The Chronicle

    Rod McGuire hadn’t intended to become a chuckwagon trail cook.
“One year I bought a team of horses, and kind of accidentally started getting ready for this,” he explains. “I had some friends that cooked with Dutch ovens, and I’ve always had large parties at the house.”
    He’s been a professional chuckwagon cook for eight years now, and mules have replaced the horses. He keeps busy, cooking at least four days a week. “I had no idea this business would be so huge,” he says. He confidently cooks, outdoors, for 400 or more people at weddings, parties and other events. He is currently booked three years out.
    McGuire looks like a trail cook, a big man with a bushy mustache, wearing a broad-brimmed western hat and a handkerchief necktie fastened under his chin with a silver slide. A large chef apron covers his work clothes.
    He does his cooking from an wagon built in the 1800s that was once featured in the movie “Lonesome Dove,” using mesquite charcoal to heat stacks of Dutch ovens and a large grill. A recent cookout at the Sherman County Fair included a typical menu: brisket, tri-tip, cheesy potatoes, grilled vegetables, chicken, raspberry vinaigrette, salad, chuck wagon beans and berry cobbler with whipped cream.
    McGuire knows of no other chuck wagon cook in the Northwest who caters on the scale he does. “There’s only a few of us who really understand what went on out there [on the historic trail drives],” he explains. “It’s a lot of work, it’s getting to be a lost thing.”
    This summer, McGuire has been polishing up his authenticity for his first appearance at the National Cowboy Symposium in Texas, where he will compete in the National Chuckwagon Cookoff Sept. 4-7.
    Thirty-one wagons are entered, most of them from Texas. Cooks are provided with meat, cottonseed oil, dried fruit, flour and pinto beans, and challenged to create a meal of chicken-fried steaks, with biscuits or corn bread, desert and beans, to serve 50 people. Additional ingredients have to have been available to cooks in 1880, and the cooking is done on an open fire using real wood. Cooks are judged on their cooking, the authenticity of their wagon, and the authenticity of their dress.
    McGuire is eager to show what he can do, and swap stories around the campfire. “I can relate to these people, compare notes. It’s like baseball, when you are playing against the best.”
    After attending the event five years ago, McGuire swore to return ... as a cook.
“I doubt they’ve ever had somebody from Oregon there before. I’m representing Oregon, the Northwest, my stuff is all made out of Juniper.”
    McGuire’s long trip back begins Sunday. He’ll load his wagon and supplies on a 22-foot trailer, hitch up behind his pickup (the mules will stay home) and head down the 1,300 mile trail to Texas.