Q&A with Outdoor Channel's Cast Iron Cowboy

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Cowboy Kent Rollins, as he’s known by some 7 million followers and subscribers across various social media platforms and YouTube, has always loved cooking and the outdoors. His life’s journey has taken him from the banks of Oklahoma’s Red River to New Mexico’s rugged Gila Wilderness to cattle ranches across the country, usually with cast iron skillets and Dutch ovens in tow. Now, in his new show, Cast Iron Cowboy on the Outdoor Channel, he’s celebrating America’s cowboys and the food—which he prepares from his restored chuckwagon—that fuels their work.

Game & Fish Magazine (G&F): Let’s start by talking about where you come from. What led you to where you are now? What led to your love of cooking?

Kent Rollins (KR): I was raised in southwest Oklahoma near the Red River. Farming ranch operation. We were all poor in that community; we just thought we were rich. But we never went hungry. My mother always made us realize we’d have plenty to eat.

She instilled in me the art of cooking and why we cook. It wasn’t just for survival. It was about bringing people together. When we were little, she always said, “It’s not the legs of the table that hold it up but the family that is gathered around it.”

I remember making my first chocolate cake at 9 years old, and that day I got to stay in the house with my mother. My dad and oldest brother were on horseback, and it was about 14 degrees outside, and the wind was blowing, so I thought the warm kitchen was a really good place to be—until I found out I had to wash dishes, too. And then I wondered if maybe being outside in the saddle wasn’t quite as bad as I thought.

I always knew that cooking was what I wanted to do in life. I was always in the kitchen helping my mother and aunts during the holidays and after church on Sunday. Those women would make some of the best food I’d ever seen in my life and never have a recipe.

By age 19 or 20, I’d learned to cook in the house pretty well and knew how to grill some things. In 1982, I started guiding and cooking for elk hunters with my uncle in the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. I’d never baked anything in a Dutch oven, and it’s a whole lot different cooking at 1,800 feet of elevation versus 8,000 feet. It was all trial and error, but I eventually figured it out.

Then I bought a chuckwagon in 1991 and started cooking for ranches. This was long before social media and the internet, but word of mouth about me spread in the cowboy circles. I also started teaching chuckwagon cooking because there weren’t many ranch cooks.

When I was cooking for ranches, the days were long. They would start at 2 or 2:30 in the morning, and I’d get to bed by 8:30 or 9 o’clock at night if I was lucky. I’d start cooking at ranches in Texas in February or March, then move north into other states until June or July, then start working back toward Texas in the fall. I remember one year that I figured it up, I guessed that I’d spent close to 200 nights—not all consecutively—in a teepee on various ranches.

When I found Shannon and remarried, we took things to a different level. She said, “You have so many stories, and you’ve cooked in such different environments—places where people would never dream of cooking. We need to film these.” So, we started on YouTube probably 10 years ago, and we’ve now built up a very loyal fan base. We’ve watched the channel grow through the years from 50 subscribers to 3 1/2 million. It’s been sort of like a dream come true.

G&F: Wow, you covered it all. That’s a heck of a story.

KR: People love to sit down and read a story. I made up my mind a long time ago. I didn’t want to read the story. I wanted to be what the story was about.

G&F: When we first spoke, you mentioned you had just been bowhunting for deer. Did you grow up hunting and fishing?

KR: I grew up doing both. My dad told me, “If you’re going to hunt something, we hunt it to eat.” We had a lot of quail around back then, a lot of farm ponds with bass and crappie and perch in them, so we tried keeping the freezer as full as we could when seasons were open or the fish were biting.

I’ve cooked about everything that has flown, crawled, or walked by camp, from rattlesnake to bison to turkey to duck. I love to get out in the outdoors, and I learned a long time ago that it was never about the hunt. It was about getting out there in what God had produced and just sitting there. It sort of just recharges your battery.

G&F: If you had to pick one animal to pursue, what would it be?

KR: I love to watch elk. I’ve seen big bulls that most people never will. I love trying to sneak up and get close to them. I’ve eaten tons of beef, but you give me a good piece of elk meat, I’ll take it over anything in the world.

They’re a beautiful creature, too. When they’re bugling, that sound still sends chills up my spine.

G&F: What are some of your favorite dishes to make from wild game and fish?

KR: I always loved crappie, but after I tried walleye the first time I caught one, I thought, “This might be the best fish I’ve ever eaten in my life.” Several years ago, instead of frying fish—which I’ve done a lot—I started smoking more of them. I use an alder wood, which has a very mellow, sweet smoke. I’d rather have a really good piece of smoked fish than a piece of fried fish.

I’ve also cooked a lot of turkeys, whether it be deep fried, on a smoker or on the grill. On ranches, I’d cook them in a Dutch oven. We have a video on the site of cooking a turkey in a Dutch oven like that.

But, you take an elk tenderloin and put it on a smoker just enough to give it a little flavor, and then finish searing it in a cast iron skillet and reduce it down with a little red wine and some onions and garlic, it’s five-star dining. Michelin. And we ain’t even kicking the tires on the pickup.

G&F: You mentioned that you guided and cooked for elk hunters in the Gila Wilderness. Could you talk about that experience and what it was like?

KR: I had an uncle that was raised out there, and he knew that country better than the forest service. He called one year, and he said, ‘I know I can make a guide out of you, and I know you’re a good cook because I know your mother.’ And he said, ‘I need both.’ My uncle made a point of going farther than anyone else to avoid seeing other hunters. We’d go about 22 miles into the wilderness, set up camp, and bring hunters in two at a time. He’d take one, and I’d take the other. We’d start in September with Coues deer, then guide bow season for elk—a lot of big elk came out of 16A and 16B in the Gila—and then we’d do rifle season and then, finally, mule deer season. It made for a long fall, and we’d run into all kinds of weather.

G&F: What was your favorite part of that time spent guiding hunters and cooking for them?

KR: Just seeing and hearing elk, because I’d never seen elk. I knew what they sounded like, but to hear them in person was totally different. We’d ride out to one of the meadows up there in the morning, and there’d be 50 or 60 cows and 8 or 10 bulls out there. It was like seeing the best motion picture you’ve ever seen in life, but it was live.

Even riding in the 22 miles on a horse or a mule, you’d see some breathtaking country—and plenty of wildlife, too. I especially remember those big ponderosa pines that seemed to stretch plumb to the heavens. I never get tired of looking at those, even now.

G&F: After guiding and cooking for elk hunters, you got a “regular” job, but then quit that and bought and restored a chuckwagon and started cooking for ranches. Could you talk about what that was like—fully going after this dream?

KR: I was driving back from the Gila one time, and I thought, you know, I have a full-time job that’s got retirement, insurance, vacation, but it really isn’t what I want to do in life for the next 30, 40, 50 years. I want to do something that I enjoy. My dad had always told me, ‘Find a job you like. Do it better than anybody else. You’ll never have a job.’

Well, when I found that chuckwagon and bought it, a lot of people said I was a fool for turning down a good job and taking this chance. And I said, “Should’ve, could’ve, and would’ve don’t buy you nothing.” You have to take a leap of faith occasionally.

There were some lean times, but after I started cooking for ranches, the phone rang nearly every time I got back home. Somebody wanted a ranch cook or catering for a wedding or other event. So, it kept me busy and on the road a lot, but it was something that I knew if I put all I had into it, I would get something in return, and that was satisfaction.

G&F: Tell us about your new show, “Cast Iron Cowboy,” on the Outdoor Channel.

KR: Shannon and I had dreamed of doing a show on the American rancher and cowboy for about eight years. We thought we had it sold to a different company at one time, and then the Outdoor Channel reached out and said, “Hey, we think we’d like to do this.”

We work with a great production team that I’ve come to call family—Rabbit Foot Productions out of Austin—and they have a great grasp on what I want out of the show. The producers ask us questions and seek out our opinions all the time, which helps ensure everything is on track.

We wanted the show to be about food, sure, but to also showcase the history of the American cowboy and rancher—how unique each operation is now across the country, how they’re all stewards of the land. They take great pride in what they do to raise the best beef that they can.

We’ll go from a cattle operation in Florida to one in Nevada. The climate is so much different, and the way in which they raise beef is entirely different, but the final product is still the same. Just like an old cook going down the trail in the 1870s and 1880s during a cattle drive, we’re feeding them by the same manner, we just have a whole lot more to work with than he did.

We’ve been on ranches that are 25,000 acres, and some that are 750,000 acres, and you never take for granted what you get to see. I thank the Lord for the sunrise and the sunset every day, for a beautiful wife that’s beside me, for dry firewood, and for not burning the biscuits.

G&F: What do you hope that folks who watch the show take away from it? What do you hope they learn or feel or experience?

KR: I hope that they see a group of individuals taking great pride and honor in carrying on a unique heritage and history. If we don’t share parts of history with people, they tend to get lost. We also wanted to show people that cattle ranching isn’t all just glamour and glory. There are a lot of long days, a lot of harsh weather, but—whether you’re a cowboy or a ranch cook—you always saddle up or build a fire, and you get it done regardless, no matter how long the day is or what the weather is like.

G&F: What’s next for you all?

KR: Well, after finished season one, they told us that although they had never done it before, they wanted to go ahead and do season two before the first season ever aired. And, so, we have two in the bank. We’re thinking that maybe season three is around the corner.

Editor’s Note: Watch Cast Iron Cowboy on the Outdoor Channel on Monday nights at 9:30 p.m. EST or catch up on the season on MOTV.

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• This extended article was featured in the January/February 2026 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe.

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