23 Old West Cowboy Food Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What did cowboys eat in the 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.

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.

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!

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).

bread, coffee, beans, beef, and bacon at the chuckwagon daily during the drive. While food variety is something to be desired, cowboys generally eat only two meals a day, breakfast and dinner. There is always an option for a third meal, but cowboys prefer to eat less.

Along the trail, the staples of a cowboy diet consisted of beans, hard biscuits, dried meat, dried fruit, and coffee. Occasionally, a type of bread known as pan de campo (or “camp bread”), which was cooked on a skillet was also available.

Beef from the herd, wild game (deer, antelope, elk, bison, and smaller game), bacon or salt pork, pinto and Navy beans from dried storage, onions, potatoes, cornbread, corn-meal mush, biscuits, apples fresh and dried, canned peaches or tomatoes, etc….

Sonofabitch stew (or son-of-a-bitch stew) was a cowboy dish of the American West.

Each morning, the cowboys would cook breakfast in cast iron grills, skillets, and pots over a hot fire. 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.

What kind of food did restaurants serve in the Old West? ›

Entrées like pork and beans, lamb pie, and ribs of beef were served in hotel dining rooms all across the country each day. While regional influences were generally muted, this menu appears to offer one local dish—stewed veal with chili.

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.

A typical breakfast for them consisted of: coffee, biscuits, maybe a little salt pork and even beans. In fact that was the most prevalent meal throughout the day. A common misconception is that cowboys ate a lot of beef while working.

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.

Cowboys enjoyed black, strong coffee. After the first round was poured, they would add more coffee grounds to the pot to keep it strong. Brewing the coffee was a way for the men to relax and catch up at the end of their long days.

Perhaps the highlight of a cowboys time was cooking up a hearty meal for themselves and their friends, a meal that would more often than not feature a large hunk of meat. It wouldn't be unusual for a cowboy to tuck a few pieces of flank steak under their saddle between the leather and the horse.