As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
This retro recipe for Cowboy Food is the perfect dish to make your first night of a camping trip. It takes me back to early August days camping high in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. Cowboy Food is camping food.
Camping Food
We ate Cowboy Food for dinner at least a couple times per camping trip. We cooked it in a pot on our camp stove perched at the end of a long picnic table. This recipe for Cowboy Food is more in the Midwest tradition because it is sweet and tangy and not spicy like a Tex-Mex version might be. Even if you’re not going camping, this recipe for Cowboy Food is sure to warm you up on a cold fall or winter evening.
College kids text home for Cowboy Food recipe
This is another one of those recipes that my college kids call or text home for. It’s like they want to impress their friends by cooking some old-fashioned down-home comfort food. That’s why I call this food “retro” food. College kids do get a little nostalgic for home cooking from time to time, I guess.
Cowboy Food for Camping
This version of Cowboy Food is a super easy dish to prepare. The hardest part of it is opening the cans, draining the kidney beans, and draining the cooked meat! The finished product is so rich and tangy you will feel like singing "Home on the Range."
Ingredients
- 1 16 oz. can pork and beans (B&M Original Baked Beans with molasses, pork and spices if available).
- 1 16 oz. can kidney beans--drained. Can substitute with other type of beans.
- 1 small can lima beans with its liquid
- 1 lb. ground beef (don't substitute ground turkey)
- 1 tsp. dry mustard (Colman's Mustard Powder in the yellow can)
- 2 T vinegar (cider vinegar)
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup catsup (ketchup such as Heinz Ketchup)
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Brown meat in large deep frying pan with salt and pepper; drain fat.
- Add to meat: dry mustard, vinegar, brown sugar, catsup.
- Stir
- Add beans
- Simmer on stovetop on medium heat 15-20 minutes
Notes
I try to find and use B&M Baked Beans for this dish just because it is what we always used at home. They also are what this "retro" recipe calls for, and they have the full desired taste effect. We also always used Colman's Mustard Powder just because we always did, and so I assume this was because of the flavor it adds. But, I think the secret ingredient of this dish is the lima beans. I am not usually a big fan of lima beans, but in here they give their lovely light green color to the mix and they add a texture which complements the other beans and the ground beef. So, don't skip the lima beans!
This recipe for Cowboy Food is much loved. We actually don’t pronounce Cowboy Food as two words. We say “Cowboyfood” as if it’s all one word. Three of the key ingredients to this dish are: a can of B&M Original Baked Beans with Molasses, Pork & Spices, Colman’s of Norwich Mustard Powder in the little yellow tin, and lima beans. Yes, lima beans. If you make this recipe with the lima beans and then without the lima beans, you will see why you need the lima beans.
Check out our little video to see how to make Cowboy Food
Make ahead and throw it in a cooler
We have made this the night before a camping trip to take with us. The night before, after cooking, let it cool, spoon it into a gallon ice cream bucket, and refrigerate overnight. The trick is: remember it in the morning. Yes, we did forget it once and were very sad. Pack the ice cream bucket of cowboy food on ice in a large cooler. Be sure to bring along something to heat it up in over a campfire or on a campstove and something to stir it with. I bring a small cast iron skillet and a large metal spoon, and those work great. You could serve it with chunks of bread, but you don’t even really need to: all the beans and meat make it really filling.
Do real cowboys eat Cowboy Food?
Do real cowboys eat cowboy food? Are you a real cowboy? Let us know. We do have some experience with real cowboys after many summers camping in Montana just down the road from working ranches. We went to rodeos and hung out with wranglers who made us rings out of horseshoe nails. One highlight was jumping up on the roof of our car as a large group of loose horses being rounded up by cowboys thundered past. The power and the thrill were real.
Pin It for Later
Shop this post
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
B&M Original Baked Beans 16 oz. can. These are the recommended beans for this recipe. I had a hard time finding them in some grocery stores, so I would stock up on them when you find them. Here they are on Amazon.com in a whole pack of 12 cans !
Colman’s of Norwich Mustard Powder. Found in the distinctive yellow tin. My mom wrote this in on the recipe for Cowboy Food, so I always try to use this kind of dry mustard. Colman’s Dry Mustard can also be found on Amazon.com here in a 4 ounce size tin.
I’m from Texas and I couldn’t agree more, Your cowboy food video looks amazing for camping. Something to prep ahead of time to enjoy more time in the wilderness. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! Yes, we usually made this ahead and froze it–maybe into two containers–then put it in the cooler the morning we hit the road for Montana or the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota/Canada. I would imagine this would taste good in Texas! We also make it in the fall when we are home and it is good for game day.