23 Old West Cowboy Food Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What did cowboys eat in Old West? ›

Cowboys in the United States relished similar "chuck" (also called grub or chow). Canned and dried fruit, "overland trout" (bacon), beans, fresh meat, soda biscuits, tea, and coffee. Breakfast might include eggs or salt pork.

Beans, biscuits, potatoes and fruit were popular

Cowboys would have eaten hardtacks, a dense bread made with few ingredients that resemble modern-day biscuits. These were edible for years. The only downside is that they were rock hard, so had to be soaked in water or milk before eating.

Cowboy dinner is a hearty casserole of flavorful beef, corn and beans topped with soft, fluffy cornbread and a layer of cheese. So delicious! This easy, comfort food casserole has been a family favorite for over 20 years! After that long, you know the recipe has to be a keeper!

Meals often consisted of hot coffee, a large pot of beans, and biscuits that were baked in a cast iron pot and slathered with lard and gravy. Today the term “Cowboy Breakfast” has evolved to include eggs and skillet potatoes, bacon or sausage, and perhaps biscuits and gravy to round out the plate.

It can be as simple a pork & beans & cornbread or as fancy as chicken fried steak creamed gravy , mashed potatoes, cowboy beans and vegetables usually served with biscuits or cornbread. Chuck wagon cooking is an art.

Their daily diet varied depending on the location and resources of the ranch, but generally it was high in protein and consisted of staples such as beans, beef, and coffee. Lunch for a cowboy might consist of a hearty stew made from beans and beef, or a sandwich made with leftover roast beef or beef jerky.

cowboy supper (plural cowboy suppers) (Northern Ireland) A meal of sausages, baked beans, and chips or mashed potatoes.

They tried to bring a lot with them, particularly wheat flour, corn meal, sugar, bacon/salt pork/ham, oats, dried beans, salt, tea/coffee, and hog lard, and by the 1860's canned food (meat, vegetables, fruit, berries.) Dried apples, raisins, figs, onions, nuts, and crackers/hard tack were also popular to bring along.

What did cowboys eat on the ranch? ›

These included coffee, bread (in the form of biscuits, corn meal, or hard crackers), meat (bacon, salt pork, beef—fresh, dried, salted and smoked—and wild game), salt, and some sugar and sorghum molasses.

This is an updated version of the chuck wagon stew made by many freed black slaves who worked as ranch hands in the West after the Civil War. It contains ingredients they stocked, including barley, root vegetables and dried tomatoes.

Popular foods in the 1880s and iconic parts of the cuisine of the Wild West included beans, fresh beef, dried meat, dried fruits, sourdough biscuits, bacon, potatoes, eggs, and salt pork. Beans were one of the most important foods of the Wild West.

Free saloon lunch: Saloons in Boomtowns like Deadwood and San Francisco offered free lunch to entice customers to stay and spend their money drinking. For a nickel beer, gold miners and outlaws alike could get an all you can eat lunch buffet of bread, bacon, ham, beans, sausages, potatoes, & fried fish.

Alcohol. When a town was first founded, the initial saloons were often nothing more than tents or shacks that served homemade whiskey that included such ingredients as "raw alcohol, burnt sugar and chewing tobacco".

And most ranch owners wanted their cowboys fed well so that they would stay healthy along the trail. So, the crew also included a cook. Along the trail, cowboys ate meals consisting of beef, beans, biscuits, dried fruit and coffee.