Cowboy Cooking

For our final exploration into culture’s diets, we will remain in America and explore what the cowboy would eat during their height in the mid 1800s.

Their diet revolved around the staples of beans, hard biscuits, dried meat, dried fruit, and coffee. Additionally, sugar was common to help to sweeten things up. Beans were #1 because they were so easy to transport: made chili, mashed beans, and bean soup. Potatoes and beans were the most common vegetables. Potatoes were great for making meals larger like filling in the space in stews.

Dried meat was also very easy to transport. It was basically a less flavored and drier version of the modern jerky we know today. There was lots of beef because it was widely available because their job involved herding cattle.

Dried fruit was also eaten because regular fruit would go bad on the frontier rather quickly. The hard biscuits were a bread baked multiple times to remove absolutely all moisture. This let them last years. However, they were incredibly hard to eat, so people often had to soak them in water or milk to comfortably digest. Legend says that some would mush it with the butt of their rifle and add it to stews to thicken them.

The chuck wagon was in bigger groups that was basically a kitchen on wheels with lots of ways to cook and food storage. However, often the cattle boss would be cheap and higher a basic chef who would just cook beans and beef all the time. These designated cooks were known as “cookies” and would cook food for a crew of cowboys. 

Coffee was made from Arbuckle beans (hence the name of the popular coffee brand, Arbuckle Coffee). Legend says they would put a Horseshoe in and if it sunk, the coffee wasn’t ready.

An interesting food that was made was Son of a Gun stew, which consisted of animal heart, liver, and tripe. Sarsaparilla was a drink made from the plant of the same name (or also Smilax Ornata). Doctor’s of the day claimed sarsaparilla could cure anything so cowboys drank it all the time.

Hard cheese was provided in rations that employers would give cowboys when they’d send them out. In fact, nearly all food eaten was given out in rations before the journey and hunting was largely unnecessary, just done occasionally for a diversity in diet.

Cowboys created corndodgers which were basically a corn dog without the hotdog.

Another food was Pemmican, a food traded with native Americans that contained fat mixed with dried meat and was formed into bars. When kept in a sealed container, they could last years. It was used as emergency food.

Maple syrup (just like the Natives from last week). Was used as a flavoring for pie or stew and often beans. Before the Panama canal all trade from east Asia came from the west port and thus cowboys in the west had easier access to it. Foods like rice were briefly available to them.