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How about Cowboy recipes???

C

Cook Chatty Cathy

New member
Ok so we are discussing (hopefully) American Indian recipes, but how about authentic Cowboy recipes??? If you know of any how about sharing them?

Like beans or stew or whatever recipes you may know. I have never really known much about these and am excited to see how many of you have info on this subject!:)

Cathy
 
I'm not sure what authentic Cowboy recipes are, especially since the "cowboy" we all think about is the Hollywood version and unrelated to the Caballero and other cattle handlers.

Real though were the "chuckwagons" in pioneer and Western days and that's where such "camping" recipes might be found. Such as found at ChuckWagon Diner (lots of recipes), also Legends of America, Texas Bob and Chronicles of the Old West as starters. :)

Making Tough Beef Tender
(1886 Daily Bee, Sacramento, California)

Lay meat out smoothly and wipe it dry.

Take a coffee cup full of fine breadcrumbs, a little salt and pepper, a little powdered thyme or other sweet herb, and just enough milk to moisten to a stiff dressing. Mix well and spread over the meat. Roll it up and tie it up with twine.

Brown in salt pork fat, then put in half a pint of water. Cover and cook.

The toughest meat is made tender and nutritious when cooked in this way.

I don't know how Cowboy this recipe is, but I sure like the name.

Fart & Dart Beans

Mix together one 16 ounce can of the following: Pinto beans, pork & beans, red kidney beans, lima beans, white northern beans and butter beans.

1 lb cut up bacon
1 chopped onion
½ tsp minced garlic
½ tsp prepared mustard
½ cup vinegar
1 cup brown sugar

Fry the bacon until done, but not crisp. Pour beans, bacon, onion and garlic into large pan and mix. Simmer for 15 minutes a combination of the mustard, vinegar and brown sugar.

Pour the liquid over the beans and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Mix the beans a couple of times during the cooking process.
 
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Nice job, canman! I like the "fart & dart" bean recipe!

Isn't pemican a soft polenta-type substance made from grain of some kind? Also, beef jerky- or dried and sometimes smoked meats/fish. Lakeside/sea-side areas have "squaw candy" which are smoked fish bellies (long strips discarded after skinning a fish).

BTW- what is "hard-tack"? Anyone know? I haven't googled it yet...
 
chubbyalaskagriz said:
Nice job, canman! I like the "fart & dart" bean recipe!
BTW- what is "hard-tack"? Anyone know? I haven't googled it yet...
Click to expand...

Excellent info CanMan!!! I am going to link to those sites and read up it is an interesting subject.

Hard-tack was a "biscuit-cracker" made of flour and water during the Civil War, our men lived off the stuff. A Civil War Reinactor that we met on one of our summer camping trips this past summer had some and he gave Maddy and I a piece to taste. It tasted roughly similar to a saltine cracker only thicker and less crisp, it kept well, but of-course it had no preservatives so it could get wormy! They often ate it with a piece of salt-pork (at times raw) and of-course the nutritional value was anything but wonderful. Because of it's density though it did help fill a man's stomache. Those poor guys!
 
A cowboy recipe I like is bear sign. It's a simple donut. I use this one from recipes from friends.

Bear Sign Donuts

Frying Time: 3-5 minutes per side
Frying Temperature: 375 F degrees

1C. buttermilk
2 eggs beaten
1C. granulated sugar
1/3 C. butter or margarine, melted
2 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
4 C. all-purpose flour

In the first bowl, mix buttermilk, eggs, sugar and melted butter until well blended.
In a second bowl, combine the baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and flour.
Slowly add the dry ingredients to the first bowl, stirring them together.
This mix should be stiff enough to hold a spoon upright; if not, mix in more flour.
Kneed together lightly for a minute or so, then turn out on a floured board or countertop.
Use a rolling pin, empty bottle or the heel of your hand to roll out to about one finger-width high (1/4 inch). Cut circles out with a small glass and set aside for about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, pour 1 inch of oil in a large skillet and heat.
It's hot enough when a bread cube browns in about 1 minute.
Slide the circles into the frying pan and brown one side. Turn over and brown the other.
Set out to drain on a plate covered with paper towels.
Cover with powered sugar and eat warm.

This was a real treat in the old west and a cook could be forgiven many sins if he made good bear sign.
 
POTATOE CAKE

This is an original recipe from 1796:

Boil potatoes, peel and pound them, add yolks of eggs, wine and melted butter, work with flour into paste, shape as you please, bake and pour over them melted butter, wine and sugar.

a quote from 1759:

"Remember that beans, badly boiled, kill more than bullets; and fat is more fatal than powder. In cooking, more than anything else in this world, always make haste slowly. One hour too much is vastly better than five minutes too little, with rare exceptions. A big fire scorches your soup, burns your face, and crisps your temper. Skim, simmer, and scour, are the true secrets of good cooking."


FRIED MUSKRAT

1 muskrat
2 medium onions
salt and pepper

Skin and remove the musk gland from the "rat". Immerse in a kettle of water. Chop and add both onions. Salt and pepper to taste. Parboil until a scum is no longer produced. Drain off water, leaving onions with the muskrat. Add more water and parboil again until tender. Remove and fry as you like in a skillet.


Salt Cod with Parsnips

Soak three pounds of salt fish overnight with the skin uppermost, and boil it about one hour, putting into it plenty of cold water. Meantime, pare a dozen parsnips and cut them in quarters, boil them half an hour or longer, until tender, drain them, and dish them around the fish; while the fish and parsnips are cooking, make the following sauce: Mix two ounces of flour and one ounce of butter or sweet drippings over the fire until a smooth paste is made, then pour in half a pint of boiling water gradually, stirring until the sauce is smooth; add three tablespoons of vinegar, season with one-half salt-spoonful of salt and half the quantity of pepper; let the sauce boil up thoroughly for about three minutes, and serve it with the fish and parsnips. A hard-boiled egg chopped and added to the sauce improves it.

Jonny Cake (Cornmeal)
(sometime called Journey)

In a large bowl combine 1 cup stoneground white cornmeal, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Stir in 1 3/4 cups milk, or enough to make a thin batter. Drop this batter by the tablespoons onto a hot well-oiled heavy iron griddle and cook the cakes over low heat for 4 or 5 minutes or until underside is browned. Turn the cakes over and cook them for5 minutes, or until the other side is browned. Serve the jonnycakes very hot with butter and maple syrup.


Venison Jerkey

6 tsp. Salt
1 1/2 tsp. Pepper
1 1/2 tsp. Garlic Powder
1 1/2 lb. Boneless Venison

Combine all the seasoning ingredients in a bowl or, if you have one, a spare spice bottle with a shaker top.
Slice the venison with the grain into strips about 1/8 inch thick. Lay out the slices and sprinkle evenly with the seasoning mix. Pound the strips lightly, flip them over and repeat for other side.
Smoke the strips until dry.
 
Sneak into the Indians camp while he is eating his stick and swipe the snake. Remove charred skin and cut snake meat into 4" pieces and in half length wise. Dredge in a flour, salt and pepper mix, pan fry in a cast iron skillet with a hunk of lard. Remove snake, drain off all but about two tablespoons of the lard, mix into the drippings, two tablespoons of the dredging flour, then stir in about 1 cup of milk. Taste for seasoning. Serve gravy over snake.
Chicken fried snake.
 
I always thought that Pemmican was like a trail mix of nuts,dried corn, maybe a bit of honey, berries and some dried venison or other meat.
 
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Cow-Boy Baked Beans

Shortcut Baked Beans

1 can 31oz. of baked beans or pork and beans
3 slices of bacon
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup barbeque sauce
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons prepared mustard
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Stove Top : Use a medium sauce pan combine onion, pork and beans, barbeque sauce, brown sugar, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce. Cook over low heat about 15 min. Top off with bacon. Makes 4 servings Cookie :)
 
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Pemmican is mostly fat. The fat is rendered and meat dried, then mixed together. On occasion some berries were added for flavor. The idea was processing the ingredients this way made a trail food that kept for some time without spoiling. Adding all the other stuff was a nonnative practice.
 
Bubba, I see u joined us in December 'tho I cannot recall if you were properly welcomed at that time, or not. We're glad you're here! We're a fine bunch of folks from all walks of life- and from all over the place. We hope to see you here often!

By the way... I like your "bear sign" recipe! I have one to- it's basically a recipe for short-bread bars incorporating lotsa berries and nuts- (or for those who don't get the name "bear sign"- sweet morsels that bears love to eat- that typically is found in their fresh "mounds" left on the forest floor!) A former co-worker also make sweet little drop-treats that are basically "hay-stacks" drizzled w/ chocolate. She calls these "bear sign" as well...

Mama- FUN recipes! What a hoot!
 
I hope you saw that that snake didn't go to waste Cathy. Lol, and that I am not being taken seriously. I should put a disclaimer:D. I never actually saw anyone eat Chicken Fried Snake on Gunsmoke.
 
Zorro, Have Gun Will Travel, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry come to mind. Aaah memories.
 
Y'know, a large percentage of the cowboys were really blacks that went west after the Civil War to find work to support themselves. At the same time quite a few blacks joined the Army for the same reason, very little work available for them. My Grandfather worked as a cowboy for a while when he was a young man and told me stories about it. Suffice to say it was hard, tedious work most of the time. The men he worked with were about half whites while the rest were black and mexican. What we got on TV and in movies was about the west that never was.
 
Bubba707 said:
What we got on TV and in movies was about the west that never was.
Click to expand...

You have made an excellent point Bubba, I believe about 99.9% of what we get from TV and Hollywood is pure B.S. and then of-course they are going to dicatate to us what to wear and how to look, give me a break!:rolleyes: I heard someone once put it this way "TV the dumbing of America":D and I like my old TV shows and some movies, but I was always taught to take it all lightly and with a grain of salt, in other words Dad taught us to think independently, research and come to our own conclusions, not allow TV to do all the thinking for us!
 
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