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At Beer and Iron, we’re here to rescue comfort food from the ordinary – armed with a trusty cast iron pot, a bottle of beer, and a whole lot of rustic charm. We blend bold flavors, real-life stories, and a dash of kitchen mischief to serve up meals that are as fun to make as they are to eat. We’ll bring honest cooking, hearty laughs, and recipes that’ll have you saying, “I can totally make that!” Whether you’re cooking over a campfire or your kitchen stove, we’re all about turning everyday meals into legendary bites, with a little help from our favorite brew and the timeless magic of cast iron.
This is the spirit of Beer and Iron (pun intended).
Adding beer to a recipe brings a host of culinary perks – it boosts flavor, improves texture, and adds an inviting aroma, all thanks to beer’s unique blend of alcohol, water, sugars, acids, and those signature bitter notes. Honestly, it’s the secret ingredient that’ll have your meal brewing with deliciousness!
Beer and Iron moves past the traditional Irish Beef and Guinness Stew. We’ll transform all kinds of dishes with beer as an ingredient to bring out those bold flavors, tender textures, and just add a little palate pleasing magic to each bite. Whether it’s a splash of a smooth porter in your stew, a dash of bock in your bread, or a generous pour of marzen in your marinade, beer’s unique mix of ingredients works wonders beyond what you’d expect. So, get ready to see your favorite comfort foods take on new life, all thanks to a humble bottle of brew and the magic of your trusty cast iron pot.
The Country Cobbler alla Italiana—Pizza Burger Pasta Cobbler
Welcome to Beer and Iron, where we talk about real cast iron cooking and share recipes with beer as an ingredient. Grab a beer set that cast iron on the heat and prepare to flip your expectations. We're serving up tales and recipes that are well seasoned and never half baked.
I'm Sulae, kitchen narrator and Dutch oven instigator. Here to tell a cobbler story that starts in a shoe store, takes a hard right into a cast iron pot, and ends with a pizza burger pasta situation topped like a river stone walkway.
This is where the good stories live.
Growing up, staying over Daddy's house was a treat! In the late seventies, when I was about nine, pushing ten, I'd wake up before daylight on a Saturday, parked myself in front of the TV with a bowl of Captain Crunch or Boo Berries, and stare at the Indian head test pattern while I waited for cartoons. My sister slept in. There were no stepbrothers or stepsisters at Daddy's to compete with. Pillows all piled up on the floor, feet stretched out... The only sound was my unadulterated crunching of candy floating in milk, bravely pretending to be breakfast.
Seeing Daddy was a treat too, sure, but doggone, six straight hours of cartoons starting with Rocky and Bullwinkle. That was a long haul for a kid wired for motion. I seldom made it all the way to the Secrets of Isis Once that light was up in the sky, the outside world took over. And over at Daddy's, the bamboo forest was calling my name.
Saturday mornings there felt like borrowed time. Cartoons. Then dirt under my feet and disappearing into that forest. Looking back now, those Saturdays seem almost routine, but back then each one felt new. Like every Saturday morning hadn't quite decided yet what it was going to be.
Before leaving for work that Saturday morning, Daddy poked his head into the living room and said, "Hey, I gotta go over to the Country Cobbler today. You want to come?"
I was mid crunch with a bite of cereal, but I still heard it clearly. "Cobbler." I lifted my head to keep the milk from pouring out and said, "Heck yeah! I'll come!"
"Great," he said. "I'm leaving in a half hour."
Half hour? What kid has an internal clock that can calculate a half hour? I didn't wait. I was already tasting peaches, cinnamon, crust, and hopefully ice cream. It wasn't even lunchtime yet. And the word "cobbler" only meant one thing to me: Dessert!
So I pulled my pants over yesterday's underwear, yanked on a sort of a clean tee shirt, and announced myself. "Ready!"
It was June in Louisiana. Hot, humid, sticky - like the air had fingers. Heat simmered off the driveway and the whole world smelled green - cut grass, honeysuckle, and that damp bayou adjacent earth that never really dries out.
June also meant peaches were in. And I loved me some peaches! The kind that dripped down your chin on the first bite and make you bend over without thinking... just to keep the juice from running down to your shirt.
Pops would haul out the old wooden ice cream maker, dump in peaches, cream, sugar and whatever magic Mimi added, and then seal up that canister. He'd packed the space between the canister and the wooden bucket with ice and rock salt. Lock on that crank right on top and tell me to sit and crank. The metal handle would get slick in my hand and my shoulder would start talking back to me. Whoever cranked got to lick the dasher afterwards, and that was worth every sore muscle. And maybe the reason my right arm has always been bigger than my left.
Mimi would take the extra peaches and bake something hot, floury and sugary. A cobbler - filling the house with that butter and brown sugar smell that made you wander into the kitchen like you'd been summoned. You could feel the oven heat when she opened the door, and the fruit would bubble around the edges, like it was trying to climb out of that pot.
We'd carry in bowls out to the back porch, where the concrete was warm under our bare feet, and the afternoon air was thick with frogs and distant lawnmowers. One scoop of peach ice cream on top, and it would melt into the crust and turn everything into a sweet, sticky gravy. If Mama had seen me eating like that, she'd have made me do a hundred toe touches right there in front of God and everybody.
So yes, I was always ready to have me some cobbler. Especially when Mama wasn't looking.
Daddy worked with Pops at the shoe store. Keene's Shoe Store was already part of downtown by the time Pops came home from World War II. "The War to which we have devoted all the resources and all the energy of our country has now produced total victory over all our enemies."
Some men went off to fight in Europe, others in the Pacific. Mr. Keene was older, a veteran of the First World War. He stayed home and did what he knew how to do. He kept the town on its feet. The little shop opened in 1942, a small place in downtown Monroe with creaky floors and the clean, well kept smell of smooth leather and shoe polish held in the air. It wasn't fancy, but it was steady. New shoes, repairs and a little bit of certainty in a rationing world.
When the War ended in 1945, Pops came home, like a lot of young men, tired, grateful and ready to work. He hung up his army uniform for tie and slacks and took a seat on the shoe fitting stool there at Keene's. Business was good. Folks took a number and waited their turn to be fitted by one of the three men Mr. Keene, my Pops, and Mr Buddy. Yep. Mr. Buddy, a man he'd worked with for decades and argue with for just as long.
Through the late 40s and 50s, Pops and Mr Buddy learned the business fitting shoes and saved what they could. They used the G.I. Bill, the post-war program that helped returning veterans with schooling and sometimes better terms on home, farm, and business loans to make a bigger move. They bought the store from Mr. Keene himself. By 1958, Keene's Shoe Store was officially incorporated under their ownership. Two veterans, one little shop, and enough paperwork to fill the back room.
For a while, they both wanted the same thing, and that was enough. But towns change whether you're ready or not. Downtown Monroe still worked. People knew where to park. They knew what door to walk through, and knew who was going to put their foot in a Brannock Device and tell them the truth.
But new started showing up anyway, and it didn't ask permission. The first big thing was Eastgate Shopping Center. Open air, new, shiny, a big deal. It promised parking instead of curbs, storefronts instead of street corners, and crowds that didn't have to know you to buy from you.
Mr Buddy loved the idea. Mr. Buddy liked anything that looked like progress. He could spot the future the way Pops could spot a worn heel. Mr Buddy talked about foot traffic and visibility and keeping up with the times. Pops talked about fit and comfort and the way a man walked when his shoes were wrong. "Downtown's going to dry up," Buddy would say, "this is where the folks are headed."
Pops didn't argue at first. He got quieter like he was measuring more than Buddy could see, and eventually Mr Buddy wore him down. So Keene's moved to Eastgate right in the middle of the action. Elias Clothing Store nearby, Eastgate Barber Shop, and eventually The Cinema. Even Howard Griffin Land O' Toys ended up at Eastgate. The whole place had that hopeful feeling new places have... Right up until they don't.
Daddy, after the Navy and a stint up in Rhode Island with Mama, he came home and took his place beside Pops on a shoe fitting stool at Keene's. Mama didn't want to leave Rhode Island. She liked it there and got a job as a telephone operator. Rhode Island, with his cool summers, walkable little towns, and the ocean as a daily backdrop with its salt air, gulls, and foghorns made it feel like the sea was always just right there nearby. And when she talked about it later, she just didn't describe a place, she described a whole version of her life.
Mama used to tell stories about her "before Daddy days" back when she was a girl in Shreveport, Louisiana, when the world felt a little wider. Shreveport's about a hundred miles west southwest, down highway eighty from Monroe. Well, West Monroe, but you get it. She went to the older C.E. Byrd High School, which, according to her, had the better football team than Woodlawn.
Even with Woodlawn star quarterback. And speaking of that quarterback, about halfway between Byrd and Woodlawn, momma used to visit a girlfriend who lived next door to a little blonde boy. The little blonde boy was buddies with the quarterback from Woodlawn. So every now and then the quarterback would wander over and just happen to be tossing a football around in the backyard, probably to show off for the two girls next door. Mama and that quarterback from Woodlawn would make googly eyes at each other over that fence. She called it a "crush." But nothing ever came of it.
Years later, when I was about to turn ten, the 1979 football season right around the Super Bowl in January 1980, she saw her girlhood crush on TV playing in that Super Bowl game my step Daddy was watching. That high school boy who used to toss a football over that backyard fence in Shreveport, Louisiana, was now all grown up and famous.
Mama about fell out of her chair... "...and Bradshaw drops back, Bradshaw looking and firing downfield. There goes Swann!! He's got it inside the five for a Steeler touchdown!! He beats two defensive backs..."
Later on, we teased Mama. So you had a crush on Terry Bradshaw and you end up marrying Al Bundy. Mama thought that was funny. Daddy? Not so much.
Anyway, back to Eastgate. That Eastgate store was the one I knew growing up. Daddy in his tie and slacks. Pops drifting in late morning on his own schedule, easing himself out of the business while Daddy eased himself in. Pops would show up in that old El Camino and then leave before lunch for a meal and a nap. If I was at the store with Daddy on a Saturday, Pops would take me home with him, stuck in that El Camino cab all the way back to West Monroe. Vinyl seats hot from the sun. The dashboard humming. Pops his pipe wedged in the vent, and the scent of Barbasol and sweet pipe tobacco, warm woody and a little ashy, riding the air the whole way.
Pops swore by the nap. Mimi swore by washing behind the ears.
Pops would say from his recliner newspaper folded just so. His voice slow and sure, like it was doctor's orders, "Take a nap, Sulae. It'll do you good."
Mimi said from her part of the kitchen with the radio low and a damp washcloth in hand, soap sharp in the air. "Sulae, did you wash behind your ears? Here, let me look. Oh, Lord! You got enough dirt back there to plant okra!"
Going to the store with Daddy on a Saturday was almost guaranteed I'd spend the middle part of the day in Pop's bed, watching As the World Turns like it was my job... Until pops his breathing did that little gear shift thing, and I knew he'd clocked out. Then I'd slide off the mattress, tiptoe like a cartoon burglar, and slip outside to find Jojo, Mimi and Pop's cocker spaniel, my main co-conspirator - out in the backyard, proudly garden a dozen of box turtles that he'd rounded up from the woods like trophies.
And that was the deal. When I wasn't napping or having my ears inspected, I got to tomcat around that part of Monroe, free and unsupervised. One mandatory nap adjacent soap opera in exchange for an afternoon of small, victimless mischief that felt like freedom.
And then, because the world never stops improving itself right up to your lap. Monroe got an indoor mall. By the early '70s, Monroe's retail go tos were changing again, and the city got a fancy new indoor mall, the Twin City Mall. Air conditioned. Fancy the future. The place where Santa Claus would visit each year to hear what the little boys and girls wanted for Christmas. "Ho ho ho!" And where... miracle of miracles... half of it could be purchased within a two hundred yard radius of the food court. No wonder mother stood so close while their children gave Santa itemized list of Christmas expectations.
Mr. Buddy wanted to move Keene's to the fancy Twin City Mall. "Eastgate's dead, Buz. It's time to move again." But Pops said no. He liked his system, his pattern, his lunch and nap rhythm. So they compromised. They'd open up a second store, and Mr. Buddy was determined it would feel like his.
Mr. Buddy didn't want to call it Keene's. He wanted to call it something catchy, something modern, something rustic- fancy. So he came up with a name, the Country Cobbler.
Now, I was a kid. I knew stories like the elves and the cobbler, but in my head, cobbler meant peaches, crust and maybe a scoop of vanilla ice cream... if the Lord was smiling. Not a man in an apron, hunched over a workbench full of broken shoes. So when Daddy said, "we're going to the Country Cobbler," what I heard was "we're going to go get country cobbler." And I don't mean the metaphorical kind. I mean peaches in a pan- crust on top- ice cream if you've lived right kind.
What I got was a shoe store again. Fluorescent lighting, rows of leather and laces. Not a peach in sight. Well, except for a few sizes of a slingback kitten heel pump in peach. My imagination had come in carrying a pie server, and the mall handed me a peach pump. I expected ice cream, not a shoehorn.
We walked through the big glass doors of that fancy mall, and instead of peaches and butter, Daddy took a hard right to a place that smelled like cardboard, leather, and kiwi polish. The kind of smell that could bleach the sweet right off your palate. Mr. Buddy was standing there to greet us. I was crushed. No peaches, no crust, no ice cream. Just loafers and that red goose they used to keep on display. Metal painted, fire engine red like some kind of mall deity for children. And if you bought a pair of Red Goose shoes, it would lay a golden egg, which was really just a plastic capsule with tiny toys inside.
Even the goose was basically saying, "Best I can do is a nickel prize and the smell of feet. *Honk! *Honk!"
Daddy had a habit of looking down at a man's shoes before reaching out to shake his hand. So when he greeted Mr. Buddy at the entry of the Country Cobbler, Daddy did a double take at Mr Buddy's feet. "Wow! Buddy, those shoes Gucci?" Daddy asked with a little question mark on the end. That really meant "Sir! Who do you think you are?"
Mr. Buddy answered, "Yeah Ronnie. Picked them up along with a pair of Salvador Ferragamo I saw at Neiman's in Dallas when I was there for the shoe store."
Later, I heard Daddy talking about Mr. Buddy to Pops. "Yeah, it's a good thing we're cutting ties. The man wears Gucci shoes and sells Dexter to the common man from the Country Cobbler."
I think Pops and Daddy were talking about the split that came soon after Mr Buddy kept the Country Cobbler. Pops kept Keene's. Daddy kept working. And I kept wondering why a place called "cobbler" didn't serve dessert.
That evening, on the way home at 6:00pm, Daddy always closed the store at 6:00. I must have been pouting hard enough to fog the passenger window. Daddy glanced over and said he'd make me a cobbler for dinner. I perked up and then immediately narrowed my eyes because I'd already been burned once by a cobbler that smelled like shoe polish and used shoe store ankle hose. But in my mind, this time it had to mean the real thing. The kind you eat and not the kind that eats your Saturday.
"How'd you know I wanted cobbler?"
"Oh, I have my ways of knowing. Let's make a country cobbler that's Gucci inspired. A cobbler good ol' Mr Buddy would be proud to eat."
He got to work in the kitchen, pulling out the Dutch oven and doing things that didn't look very cobbler -ey. Browning meat stirring sauce. Dropping dough on top like he was laying rocks along a garden path. The whole house started to smell warm and savory, not toasty and sweet though.
He set the pot in the oven and asked if I wanted to sit on the patio. It was a rare, cool Louisiana evening, so I sat on the back patio listening to the nighttime chorus of cicadas and tree frogs while the kitchen filled with wonderful smells. The screen door sighed every time it swung, and the yellow porch light still pulled moths in until the air looked dusty and alive.
Daddy wiped his hands on a dish towel and he said, "I'm going to get a beer. You want something?"
I saw my chance. "Yeah." Trying to sound casual. "I'll have a beer, too."
He gave me a look. Not a mean one. Just the kind dads give when they know exactly what game you're playing. And then he walked off anyway.
A minute later, he came back with a short, stubby Coors in one hand and a long necked brown bottle in the other. He popped the cap on the long neck first, the cap letting off that little. The sound of being welcomed into manhood. He handed me the sweating bottle. I looked down root beer.
"What's this?" I said, grinning so he knew I was halfway kidding.
Daddy popped the cap off his stubby and said, "Yeah, I'd get a stubby and you get a root."
So there we were, two guys waiting on dinner on the back patio, each with a cold bottle in hand. His was a Coors. Mine was a Barq's, but in that moment it didn't matter. It felt like the first time I was doing something growing up with my dad. Nothing like drinking a beer with your father. Even though yours comes from the kiddie aisle.
When the timer dinged, Daddy took one last swig from that short brown bottle and then threw it up and over into the bamboo forest. He did that often. I never did figure out why. Maybe to impress me with his arm. Or maybe just to hear the glass crash into those hollow stalks and watch the nesting crows lift up into the dusk.
Either way, it was cobbler time. Daddy opened up the Dutch oven and revealed something bubbly and beautiful. Crusty bread cobbles, hamburger, sausage, cheese. It looked like a whole pot full of upside down pizza crowned with those little rolls baked golden on top. It wasn't a cobbler. Well, not the dessert kind anyways. But it was delicious. It wasn't disappointing. Not at all. I was impressed. This was definitely a feast.
Daddy explained that a cobbler didn't have to be sweet. It just has to look cobbled on top. I didn't know what cobble meant, so he took me outside and showed me the little rock pathway that was illuminated by the yellow porch light. He'd made that little path from river stones he'd hauled back from Arkansas... one trunk full at a time. "That's cobbled," he said, and suddenly the dish made sense.
After we finished our pizza cobbler, Daddy pulled out a second pot... one I didn't know about. This one smelled like heaven. Peaches and sugar. Flour and butter. When he lifted the lid to show off those peaches and crust, I swear it gave off its own light. The whole kitchen glowing like a Georgia summer.
"That's a cobbler, too," he said. And I believed him.
He warmed up that ice cream scoop under the faucet's hot water, and then he dug into the top of a cube of hard vanilla ice cream from a square carton. And then he handed me a bowl that finally matched the picture in my head. It was at that moment, that moment there, I forgave him for every time he asked Pops to take me to his house for a nap.
Some cobblers fix shoes, some cobblers feed you peaches, some cobblers or casseroles in disguise, and some cobblers you marry instead of backyard crushes that go off to win four Super Bowls and make your mama blush fifty years later.
This brings us to our camp cast iron Dutch oven meal. The Country Cobbler a la Italiana or close enough for camp cooking. It's a pizza burger pasta cobbler inspired by a shoe store run by a man in Italian loafers with more soul than sense. And yes, we're cooking pasta in the woods. Society is fragile, so let's lean into it.
Grab your deep twelve inch camp cast iron Dutch oven. Get some briquettes or some lump charcoal going. We'll do this out where the air is nice and the ground is never quite level, so the pot will have opinions. I like to get everything dressed right dress and ready to go. Mise en place That way I'm not digging through the cooler like I lost my keys in it. When the fire is right, I'm going to start cooking. Nothing makes an outdoor chef look more scattered than sprinting around looking for garlic while your briquettes are quietly dying of disappointment.
A printable recipe is available on the website because some of you are responsible adults and love to read. Here, I'm giving you the quick ingredient rundown so you can get your thoughts staged and your priorities in a row.
Ingredients. This is the shopping list you'll likely forget one item from. One pound of Italian sausage. One pound of ground beef. A small diced onion. Two to three minced garlic cloves or more (I like more). Two to three bell peppers. Any color will work. This dish will have a reddish tone from the marinara, so consider green peppers for contrast. Two teaspoons of Italian seasoning. One and a half teaspoons of crushed black pepper. A half to one teaspoon of crushed red pepper. This is optional, of course. My wife is not a red pepper fan. I usually leave this out. One teaspoon of fennel seed. I like fennel in this dish I do. I usually crush it along with the peppercorns. Two tablespoons of tomato paste. That's about half of a six ounce can. One twenty four ounce jar of marinara sauce of your choice. One twelve ounce can of a mild lager beer with a low IBU. Don't get a hoppy beer. This beer is for the sauce. The savory dough topping has its own liquid measurements. Three hundred grams, or about ten and a half ounces of dry pasta. This one's tricky. We're going to talk about this in a bit. Because pasta... it likes to lie to you about volume. One to two cups of shredded mozzarella cheese. A half a cup of grated parmesan. We're gonna salt to taste. I never need to add salt to the sauce part of this recipe. But remember, I can't taste salty for you. If you're tasting for salt, wait and do it before you add the cheese and before you add the savory dough topping. But take note: the savory dough topping will need its own salt. One beaten egg. This is going to be for brushing the top of the cobbles.
We're topping this with bread and I call it the savory drop dough cobbles because we're adults and we can do that. Here are the ingredients for the savory drop dough cobbles: Two cups of all purpose flour. Three teaspoons of baking powder or a tablespoon. One teaspoon of baking soda. One teaspoon of salt. A stick of butter, One cup of milk, broth or beer. This is the liquid only for the savory dough topping. Don't add this to your sauce. This is just the bones of the savory drop dough cobbles. Feel free to add any other ingredients as you see fit. I'll explain more later. For now, just think flour, leavening, salt and butter, plus a few goodies. It's basically a biscuit that never went to finishing school.
Now let's get our fire going. We're using a deep twelve inch cast iron Dutch oven. If all you got is a regular twelve inch, you can absolutely make this work. A deep ten inch will work too. You'll just end up with a little extra cobbled dough, which is not a bad problem to have. I follow the times two guideline. Take the diameter of your Dutch oven and multiply it by two. Twelve inches becomes twenty four briquettes. It's simple math. This way you don't have to stand there guessing and wondering if your Dutch oven has opinions about temperature control.
For searing and frying, I start with twenty four briquettes under the oven. You'll never actually fit all twenty four under that pot. The ones that don't fit can sit around the base and contribute emotionally.
First, sear the sausage. Start with a dry, hot cast iron Dutch oven. Press the one pound of sausage into a flat layer so it covers most of the bottom. Leave a little room around the edges so the moisture can evaporate. Because we're searing pork, not boiling our regrets. As the sausage cooks, it'll render the fat. That fat is going to become our cooking oil for the beef later. Nature provides.
Outdoors, a Dutch oven almost never sits perfectly level. Gravity always pulls the fat toward one side of the pot. The low side. I called the other side. The high side. This is not French technique. It's campsite reality. Gravity is the sous chef.
Let the sausage sear until it develops a good crust on both sides. Once you've got that good crust, chop it up with a meat chopper or your spatula and push the crumbles toward the high side of the pot. You're not going to be able to get all the fat out of that sausage, and that's fine. When you've got a small pool of rendered fat sitting on the low side. Transfer the sausage to another container or another Dutch oven lined with paper towels. That fat is exactly why the next step works.
Now add the ground beef in the same way. Press it into a flattened layer and lay it into the pot right over that thick layer of oil. The sausage donated for the cause. While the beef steers go back to the sausage, lay another paper towel over it and press out as much grease as you can. Just leave the meat in the paper towels in that holding pot. We're cooking outdoors. Clean is a moving target. Let the beef brown and caramelize on both sides, then chop it up and transfer it into the holding pot with the sausage.
Now we're getting into the vegetables. Look at your pot. How much fat is left in the Dutch oven? Is there enough to saute the onions? I'll let you make that executive decision. Add the onions to the hot pot and saute until they stop being crunchy and start being useful. Once the onion is moved in the right direction, add the bell peppers. When things start to steam a bit, that's your cue for the garlic. In this dish, the garlic goes in after the party has already started, not before. Unless you enjoy burnt garlic and sadness.
Now we're going to build our base and get ready for the seasoning. Stir in the Italian seasoning, black pepper, the optional crushed red pepper, the fennel seed, and the tomato paste. You need to keep things moving and let that paste cook until it darkens slightly. It'll be thick and pasty at this point. That's perfect. Don't add any liquid.
While the paste is doing its thing, take a moment to check your briquettes or whatever fire you'll be baking this with. We're going to need the equivalent of about twenty four fresh briquettes. Me? If they're burned down, I'll take two small briquettes and count them as one. The Dutch oven doesn't care about our math. It only cares about the heat.
Once the paste is darkened, pull the pot off the fire and let's mix in the rest. Because if you do this next part over nuclear heat, you're going to glue that pasta to that cast iron and you'll be inventing new words. Pappapisshu!!
Add the marinara sauce plus the beer. But don't pull that can of beer right out of that cooler and pour that cold beer in that hot pot. My suggestion if all you have is an ice cold beer, is to pour in the marinara first and then the beer. Pour the full twenty four ounce jar of marinara, and then the full twelve ounce can of beer and give it a quick stir. Now add back the crumbled sausage and the beef, then add the dry pasta. It's gonna look pretty liquidy right now. Don't panic. That's just the sauce pretending it doesn't know what it's supposed to do yet.
Now, quick, but very important note on the pasta: not all pasta is created equal. And when it comes to this dish, volume measurements will betray you. My first attempt at this recipe. I used elbow pasta with crescent rolls on top and three cups of elbows worked great. The next time I made it, all I had was ditalini and I measured three cups again. Then, with the wisdom of experience and an Imperial Russian porter in my hand, I started doing some thinking. Dangerous, I know.
Here's what I learned. There's a lot more ditalini in three cups than three cups of elbow pasta. Same volume, much more pasta. So I weighed it. Three cups of ditalini weighed significantly more than the elbows, which meant more pasta fighting over the same amount of liquid. More pasta - same moisture- problem!
To make things challenging, I asked my wife to pick up some elbow pasta. She did... technically. What she brought home was little tiny elbow pasta. I weighed that, too. And yep. Different again. To put all of this in perspective, Brella elbows and Brella ditalini come in the same size box. Both are sold as one pound - 454 grams. But pasta boxes are basically air storage devices with commitment issues. You can fit a whole lot more small pasta into the same space than larger shapes. Same weight, very different volume. Very different moisture demands.
If you've got a scale, measure pasta by weight at home and pack it into camp. If you don't, I've got volume guidelines on the website. But honestly, get a scale. They're cheap and incredibly helpful if cooking is your jam.
This recipe won't be very presentable if it's too soupy, but I'd rather soup than undercooked pasta. This is not a "cook the pasta al dente and then finish in the sauce" situation. The pasta is going to go in this dish dry. Go straight into the sauce, and then it's going to cook all the way through in that sauce. There's no al dente here.
Here's the key: taste the pasta before you add the cheese and before you add the bread cobbles. If the pasta isn't done then add some more liquid and stir it in well. Get the mouthfeel exactly where you want it first and then move on to the cheese. For me, I pre-measure three hundred grams at home and pack it in with me. But don't think for a second I still don't do a mouth check. Underdone pasta will ruin this meal and I'm not willing to pretend otherwise.
Now we're getting ready to cover and bake. We still haven't added our cheese, nor have we added our cobble topping. That comes in a bit. Make sure the pasta is mostly submerged, cover the pot and let's bake... or really simmer with a lid. We're using a twelve inch camp cast iron Dutch oven and using the time two guidelines: Put eight briquettes or the equivalent under the Dutch oven and sixteen briquettes on the top. Bring everything to a steady simmer. Controlled chaos. The fun kind.
Normally we'd rotate the pot every few minutes. We're not going to do that. Instead, every five to seven minutes, lift the lid and give everything a good stir. Listen to the wisdom of your cast iron Dutch oven. When you stirred it last, did the meal fill a little too intimate with the bottom of that pot? Was it starting to stick? If so, remove two to four of those eight briquettes from under the Dutch oven. It's like turning the heat down. This matters. A slow simmer beats a burnt on, stuck on meal every time.
Before you put the lid back on, smooth out the top nice and flat. Don't let any pasta stick its little head up. Exposed pasta will toast char and stop absorbing moisture, and later that turns into an unpleasant crunch. Make sure everything is flat, flat, flat. Return the lid and let it go for another five to seven minutes while you sip your beer and start creating the cobbles.
Let's get ready for the savory drop dough cobbles. Now word to the wise prepare your savory drop dough at home. Everything except the liquid. Stow the dry mix in a zipper bag and keep it in the freezer or cooler. In camp, have your mixture ready and waiting on one cup of liquid beer, broth or milk. Keep the dried dough mix cold so the cut in butter stays nice and firm until the last moment.
Here are the steps for the savory drop dough. Combine two cups of all purpose flour, three teaspoons of baking powder, one teaspoon of baking soda, and one teaspoon of salt. Mix this well. Cut in one stick of butter until the mixture looks like coarse sand, with little pea sized bits of butter still hiding in it. Shaggy crumbs that loosely clump if you squeeze a handful.
Now ask yourself, do you want to add anything extra to the cobbles? Garlic powder, dried oregano, Italian seasoning, maybe a handful of shredded mozzarella or Monterey Jack. Maybe a couple of tablespoons of grated parmesan. This is your moment. Be the person you want to be.
Mix in one cup of milk, broth, or beer. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until a thick, sticky batter forms: thicker than pancake batter, but looser and stickier than biscuit dough. It should look like it's slowly trying to escape the spoon, but not quite succeeding. If you need to add a little more liquid, feel free to do so. If you choose beer for the dough, just know you're committing to the bit and I respect that.
Now don't forget the pot. Keep stirring the simmering Dutch oven every five to seven minutes. Ten minutes can be a bit long between stirs when you drag your utensil along the bottom. Does it feel like things are starting to stick? If so, reduce the heat, stir more often, or remove all the bottom heat and let the heat from the lid do the work. The Dutch oven is talking to you. Listen to its wisdom.
As the dish thickens, open the pot and stir more frequently. This is also when you start taste testing the pasta. Keep stirring and tasting until the pasta is done. This is the part where you "chef" instead of just following directions. My suggestion here is to trust this process. It thickens nicely during this stage and the pasta may seem a little underdone at first. Just keep going. Don't instantly reach for more liquid. Wait until you're convinced you truly need it. I haven't had to add extra liquid yet, and I'm not out here with a hydration kink. So no panic hydrating the dish. You can trust the starch, you can trust the heat, and you can trust the time for them to do their jobs.
Okay, the pasta is done. We're gonna add the cheese. Pull the Dutch oven off the heat. Stir in the shredded mozzarella until it melts and the mixture becomes thick and cohesive, like it's finally got its life together. If you're using optional add ins like pepperoni, olives, cooked bacon, and the like, stir those in now.
So here's the thing: Cheese is wonderful stuff. Yes it is! However, the last time I made this dish, I completely forgot to add it. There I was ready to eat and I looked down and saw that both my garlic and cheese were still sitting on the camp table, looking pitiful and abandoned like a forgotten soccer player still waiting on their parents long after practice ended.
After mixing in the cheese or not, level off the dish. Smooth out the surface flat so the topping will bake evenly. Flat as your friend; peaks... They're your enemy.
Now we commit. We're going to add the savory drop dough cobble topping. There are three options you could use here. Choose one based on your mood and your available patience.
Option A: The Savory Drop Dough Cobbles This is my favorite! Spoon, roll, or dollop the drop dough you made earlier and evenly over the top, leaving small gaps between the cobbles for steam to escape. Don't pack them in too tight and don't smooth it out into one sealed lid unless your goal is a dumpling hat. But a hat ain't cobbles.
There will be one of three outcomes here. One, you will have perfectly covered your dish with the cobbles and have no dough left. Or two, you have covered your dish and you ran out of dough. The problem may be your cobbles are too large and that's okay. Leave them there. Take note and next time either make them smaller or increase the savoury dough drop recipe by adding one more cup of flour, one more teaspoon of baking soda, and another half cup of liquid. Or three, you covered your dish and have dough left over. That's okay. Don't cram the rest of it in there. Leave some space for the steam to escape. Just take note and next time make the cobbles a bit bigger. They should be about as big around as the widest part of an egg, but not as long. Maybe a bit smaller than a golf ball or a ping pong ball. Once you get your savoury drop dough cobbles placed, brush them with a beaten egg and bake until golden brown and done.
Option B: Crescent rolls. If you want a sweeter topping, use two to three packaged cans of crescent rolls from the grocery store or market. Because sometimes we choose convenience and call it strategy. Here's a neat trick roll the dough sheets out flat. Spread a very, very thin layer of sour cream. Sprinkle just a little bit of garlic powder and then roll them back up into those crescent shapes. Brush them with a beaten egg and bake until golden brown. You'll likely use two packages. The third is just in case.
Option C: Canned Biscuits. This will work too. Use a couple or three packages of canned biscuits. Cut them into quarters or halves and set them over the top, spaced out. Brush with a beaten egg and bake until golden and done. You'll likely use two cans and like the crescent rolls, the third is just in case.
If you're thinking yeast bread or yeast dough. Nope. Sorry. Done that. Didn't work. Here's why: we're heating the topping from underneath with steam from our cooked sauce and pasta. And we're heating from above with direct and indirect heat from the hot briquette covered lid of the Dutch oven. Steam blocks the browning of bread, so the bread turns into a dumpling before the crust can form. Your yeast is over there asking for proofing time, and the Dutch oven is going to be like, absolutely not.
This savory drop dough cobbler topping works because it uses baking powder. A chemical leavening agent rather than yeast. Yeast will struggle in all that steam, and it needs time to do its job. By the time we get to the topping, this dish is essentially done, and we ain't waiting around for dough to have a personal growth journey.
Bread doesn't brown over steam. It steams over steam. If it's bubbling underneath, yeast bread will never have a chance. So don't expect the savory drop dough cobbler topping or even the crescent rolls to have a classic roll or loaf texture. It won't. Well, not completely. Is that bad? No way. Think pizza crust. It "eats" differently, right? Yeah it does. Just a bit more gooey than sliced bread or a dinner roll, which, honestly, it's kind of the point.
Once the savory drop dough or the crescent rolls are in place, brush the topping with a thin layer of a beaten egg. Cover the pot. Place sixteen briquettes or the equivalent on the lid and let it bake. At this point, I don't use any heat under the pot. That dish is already wicked hot, and that Dutch oven is no slouch either. Let the heat of the food from underneath and the heat from the lid from above do the work. Rotate the lid about once every five to seven minutes. Peak just enough to check the progress and then put the lid back on. Bake until the topping is browned and looks like it's something you'd be proud to take a picture of and post on your Instagram.
Here's a timing note: a rough guide is fifteen to twenty five minutes for the cobble topping, and that depends on your fire. Call it "done" when the topping is deeply golden and cooked through.
Now let it rest. I know this is the hard part. Pull the Dutch oven off the heat and let it sit for about ten minutes so everything can set up. Unless you enjoy molten cheese lava and poor decision making. Trust me, this meal comes off the fire wicked hot!!
Some of the meals I share, like this Country Cobbler recipe, have quite a few steps, and some of those steps can feel quite complicated. Outdoor cooking is often a race against the fire. We're bent over a hot cast iron, trying to look like we know exactly what we're doing. Let me lean you in on a little secret. None of us really know what we're doing. Sun. Rain. Heat. Cold. Wind. The bell pepper in the dirt and the dropped jar of marinara sauce. It all matters, and none of it is under your control. That's just part of cooking in the great big outdoors.
But you keep working on recipes like this one and you will hone your skills, my friend. You sure enough will. You'll get good at this cast iron Dutch oven cooking. One fire, one meal. One mistake at a time.
Outdoor cooking isn't easy, that's for sure. But that's also the reason you don't see many folks doing it. People migrate to easy and they run... they run from hard. You? Nah, you're tougher than that.
But wait. Whatever happened to Keene's Shoe Store and the Country Cobbler? Well, time passed and Monroe grew. And what was new became old. The News Star headlines shifted from "Come Shop at Monroe's Finest Retailers" to "The Mall will now be Converted into Medical Offices." A lot of the Twin City Mall shops either moved to the new Pecanland Mall in the mid eighties, or they just went out of business because the one stop mall has a way of becoming only one stop. And what a mall it was. Monroe had never seen anything like this before. Neon. Skylights. And the kind of optimism you can only build out of concrete and air conditioning.
Daddy kept Keene's at Eastgate, and as time passed, instead of being surrounded by fine clothing stores, pro golf shops, and jewelry counters, Eastgate hosted a beauty college, a plasma center, and a Dollar General. The parking lot cracked a bit, but his shoe store still had a steady flow of loyal customers. Customers Daddy catered to because Daddy still fit the shoe to the customer; official shoe fittings, if you want to know. He couldn't afford space at the Pecanland Mall, and he couldn't compete with the wall to wall shoe options and every size either. So he did what smart small businesses do: he specialized. He stocked the sizes that counted; very small shoes and shoes that were considered larger than most.
Well, I'd say big feet, but people hear that like it's an insult. Ain't it funny? Who decides which part of us is supposed to be big or small? Big hands on a man is usually a compliment. Big noses? Not so much. Lips? Have you seen some of the lips in Hollywood? Lord have mercy! Either way, big lips or little lips, this cobbler will find its way through any size mouth. No worries.
Daddy still had that stereo in the men's section of his shoe store. Playing that AM 540 channel. Back then it wasn't talk radio. AM 540 played old time country, news, farm reports, spotlights on local personalities, and Paul Harvey News and Comment and "the rest of the story." He still special ordered. He still offered credit accounts to some of the oldest customers. No favoritism. It was just some of those accounts had been there for decades and he just kept them going.
I don't remember what exactly happened to the Country Cobbler. My second decade of life was focused on friends, camping, and tromping unsupervised all over Monroe, convinced that was what freedom looked like. By the time I started waking up from my adolescence, the Country Cobbler was gone.
Keene's? Keene's wasn't! Keene's Shoe Store endured right up to the day Daddy retired and locked that door for the last time at 6:00pm sharp.
Between a shoe store and a Dutch oven, I learned this: a cobbler is more than one thing. It can be fixed. It can be a feast. And if you're lucky, it can be the reason you slow down long enough to notice that you're growing up... one good bite at a time.
And with that, The Country Cobbler a la Italiana is yours to try, and I hope you do. Now, y'all, don't be strangers. Let me know how yours turns out at beerandiron.com and join the conversation. Remember, at Beer and Iron, we don't just cook with beer, we let the good times ferment. Until next time, stay sizzling. Keep the tales flowing. And remember, the only thing better than a well-seasoned skillet is a well-seasoned story. We'll see you next time on Beer and Iron