Beans, Beans
By Sherril Steele-Carlin
Beans are famous as the cowboy's favorite food, but just why are beans such a staple of cowboy cooking?
Back when chuck wagons were thicker than flies in the west, one of the cook's most reliable standbys was the bean. Could be a pinto, red, white, or navy, but it was beans in a pot that made up part of almost every supper on the range.
Beans were cheap, easy to store and carry, and pretty easy to cook, too. They were also filling. Cowboys worked hard, and needed a lot of food to fuel their ridin’ and ropin’. Beans are full of protein, and when you eat a plate of beans, you tend to feel full and satisfied longer. Old-time cooks may not have known about protein and vitamins, but they did know beans were a necessary element to their cooking. The cowboys often called beans “whistle-berries” for their legendary production of gas. In her article “Cookin' the Old Cowboy Chuckwagon Way,” writer Martha Hollis says “Pinto beans are cheap food, easy to store and friendly to spices. A sack of beans can get one through some lean, tough times. But they do require long cooking, particularly if they are old.”
Today, you can cut down on some of the cooking time if you soak the beans overnight, or cook them in a crock pot -- long and slow cooking brings out the flavor and makes the beans tender.
Check out these great recipes for cowboy beans:
Clearly, there are as many recipes for cowboy beans as there were cowboys on the range. Each one is a little different, and all could have been served up by the cook from his chuck wagon.
Traditionally, beans were made with lard, bacon, pork, or salt pork. Today, you can make them with just about anything, and they’ll still taste darned good.
For More Information:
For more great cowboy recipes, I recommend the following books:
- Texas Cowboy Cooking by Tom Perini
- Cowboy Cooking by Mary Gunderson
- Come An' Get It: The Story of the Old Cowboy Cook by Ramon F. Adams, Nick Eggenhofer
- Cowboy Cooking by Tom Watson
