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.

What is a common meal that cowboys on the trail would eat? Beans, biscuits and maybe bacon. That was the norm. They would also eat beef, anything they might come across (rabbit, wild birds).

Beans, biscuits, potatoes and fruit were popular

'His first experience of pemmican' by Harry Bullock-Webster, 1874-1880. Beans and potatoes were also by far the two most common vegetables in the old west. They could be cooked quickly and added to a number of dishes, like stews.

Along the trail, the staples of a cowboy diet consisted of beans, hard biscuits, dried meat, dried fruit, and coffee.

“A typical day's food on the trail was meat generally beef or cured salt pork bacon, hot bread or biscuits, dried fruit and coffee for breakfast. The lunch and dinner meals included roast beef, boiled potatoes, beans, brown gravy, bread or biscuits and coffee.

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.

anything that was available, wild game naturally, fruits, nuts, berries, ground corn meal, pine nuts, roots, leafy greens, if it was edible they ate it. Some had gardens for potatoes, onions, corn, beans and vegetables that would grow in their region.

They were most likely pinto or possibly red beans. Think southwest cuisine. They may have had tomatoes cooked with them, along with onions, garlic and chile peppers. Cooked beans spoil or sour quickly, so cowhands wouldn't have eaten beans on the trail unless they were traveling with the chuck wagon.

What vegetables did cowboys eat? ›

Taters and whistle-berries

While some cowboys working ranches might eat more potatoes, "whistle-berries" (one of many cowboy names for beans) were the primary vegetable available to cowboys on the cattle trail, and made up most of their meals.

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.

Food for the trip had to be compact, lightweight, and nonperishable. Each family brought along such staples as flour, sugar, cornmeal, coffee, dried beans, rice, bacon, and salt port.

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.

Breakfasts were created from dried beans, flour, ground corn, coffee beans, lard, hard-tack crackers and large sides of salt-cured meat. Each morning, the cowboys would cook breakfast in cast iron grills, skillets, and pots over a hot fire.

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.