Cocineros de Fuego y Fierro

Cocineros de Fuego y Fierro (Cooks of Fire and Iron) . . . aka Dutch oven cooks! Back in the 70’s while we were living in Carlsbad, New Mexico, Bill and I signed up for a weekend workshop in Dutch oven cooking. Since then, Bill has taken his cooking to new levels. We live at the CE Miller Ranch, 11 miles west of Valentine, TX, and cooking is a sideline to raising cattle. We have cooked for ranch roundups and branding, corporate dinners, church meetings, cutting horse clinics, parties and weddings for anywhere from 5 to 150 people. Not your usual “barbecue”! Bill cooks prime rib to Mexican food and everything in-between (well, as a born-and-bred rancher, he prefers not to cook chicken!). Bill says he cooks by feel and intuition (and he does!) which drives me wild because he doesn’t use recipes whereas I’m a recipe person. His biscuits, cornbread and baked goods always turn out well (if the wind is blowing hard it may be a little scorched on one side). A friend states, “Let’s go out and cook in a 45 mph wind and we’ll see who the Dutch oven cooks are!”