What Did Cowboys Eat in the Old West?
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- čas přidán 10. 07. 2024
- The history of food in the United States is one of the more complex histories in the entire world, with Earth’s melting pot bringing together countless cultures and lifestyles to allow for any kind of cuisine you can think of only a few miles away. However, what would you say if we told you America hasn’t always been home to any and every meal you could think of? In fact, go back more than a few decades and you probably wouldn’t be able to recognize the food scene as it stands today.
Needless to say, the culture of food, no matter what country or continent you hail from, has changed over the years, whether it's from the way we eat, prepare, store, or source each of our meals. While the mass production of both farming and artificial, processed foods has changed the way we eat, fast food, chain restaurants, and convenient dining hasn’t always been possible, especially prior to the 20th century.
Despite the differences in appearance, however, it doesn't remove the beauty and context hiding within every dish available to us throughout history. Most of our images depicting the cuisine of the western frontier might consist of a simple can of beans or basket of picked berries or a tin of beef jerky, but we can promise you, it was so much more than rations and preserves. To learn more about the wonderful food seen across tables and campsites aplenty in 19th-century America, here are two types of popular foods from the wild west…
0:00 Introduction
1:16 Pemmican
7:25 Hardtack
Music produced by CO.AG: / @co.agmusic
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They ate a lot of beans back in them days. I know they tried adding some cured meats or salted beefs or even jerky or bacon to the beans but most often it was beans and bread. Watching old westerns as a kid I always thought the way they ate in the movies was so cool. Eating out of tin pan dipping the biscuit or bread in the soup or stew and eating like a cowboy. My mama would yell at me saying “quit eating like them cowboys in the movies” and I’d say “oh come on mama I ain’t got time I got cattle to tend to and hogs to feed” knowing damn well we didn’t even have a dog lol
😂
Nice to reminisce about old times...
I think crackers were also common because it’s like a portable food
Whatever they wanted ,
As long as it's beans . Lol
Nice to reminisce about old times...great video...thank you very much.
I imagine cowboys eating the way i do when i stumble in drunk and shove cold left overs into my face. What i mean is, they ate what they had and they were grateful. (lol)
After the tribe had made the pemmican, they would cut it into manageable strips with the traditional pizza wheel.
Lol. Then vacuum sealed it 😆
by proxy
The pemmican Pizza cutter was original equipment found in the leather pouches of the mountain men cowboys!
I make an improved pemmican in fact one "block" of it went with a contestant on s survival reality show. I also make a survival hardtack that can be chewed without dental damage and has flavor and enhanced nutrition. I see nothing wrong with improving old things with modern technology. Very informative video. Thanks for the upload. Liked and subbed.
I'd love to try some! This content makes me want to drive to New Mexico and get some of this stuff..
@@southbizzle some places still make it I saw a catalog and I think it was a 1 or 2 bar of pemmican was 19 bucks. I use the real native recipe: equal amounts by weight not volume. Powdered very lean jerky only use red meat, dried powdered berries I use mostly buffalo berries sent to me from relatives in South Dakota. However I do on occasion use a mix I dehydrate myself. Finally very warm not hot rendered kidney fat. That's important for long term storage and best nutrition. A butcher saved it for me but a company in the UK sells blocks of the stuff saving you a lot of effort and time. I use a mixer not by hand. Mix your dry ingredients thoroughly and salt a little sugar then the fat. Mold it anyway you want or shape it into bars balls whatever you wish but work quickly. For the contestant I added extra salt and brown sugar Dom honey powder and vitamin powder. I also used bison, beef, elk and venison. If you make a cake score the surface with a knife to facilitate portion control and ease breaking the portions off. I finally vacuum packed it do the shows inspectors could contaminate it by touching and put that in an aloksak so that when it was opened bugs couldn't get to it and bears couldn't smell it. Thanks for responding
Great video!
My grandmother always told us you will eat anything if you're hungry enough.
Great vid.
Glad to hear you stopped calling them buffalo and properly started saying bison! Good job
Buffalo in America, the American Buffalo only pedantic nerds insist on calling them other than the traditional name. Real Americans call them Buffalo!
Love your content man! The narration is on point
Great video! Very well covered!!!!
This was not about cowboys or the old west. I think you're confusing them with buffalo hunters on the plains or trappers up north. Cowboys ate from a chuck wagon or at the chuck house on a ranch. Lots of beans and fresh bread and biscuits and smoked meats. Sometimes even fresh beef and desserts like wild berry cobblers or apple pie if cookie happen to come across a tree with fruit on it. If he saw a deer, hed more than likely shoot it and theyd have venison for supper. A cowboys food supply was not so limited. But always a pot of beans too.
I did a college paper on the economics of the Texas to Kansas cattle drives. On those trips rice was the most common starch. Rice packs lighter than beans, was cheaper and both the hispanic and southern drovers were used to eating it. A stew made from rice and either beans or meat with dried onion and peppers was the most common meal. Occasionaly served with biscuits but flour was expensive and saleratus (baking soda) even more so. Some of the trail drive cooks tried to keep a sourdough lump alive but it was hard, especially in cold or hot weather.
@@mattlien5844 Well, I live in ranch country and Ive known a lot of old working cowboys, and Ive never heard any stories about eating rice on the trail.
@@embreyd4e686 how old? 150 years 160? Cattle drives were mostly a thing of the past by the eighteen eighties. At some point before WWII rice became an asian thing and "real" americans didn't admit to eating it. Funny thing is rice is almost never mentioned in the provision lists for those leaving Missouri for California or Oregon. It seemed to be mostly a southern / Texas thing along with dried peppers. As I said in my initial reply, one pound of dry beans bulks up to about 1 1/3 lbs of cooked beans while one pound of dry rice cooks up to 2 lbs of cooked rice. Cheaper to buy and cheaper to pack made rice a no- brainer for drovers.
@@mattlien5844 Yes, I know many 160 year old cowboys....I mean, there are still working ranches that utilize cowboys for labor. Also, Im sure you know how information was passed on before the internet. He learned it from his dad, who learned it from his dad or whoever, and so on. Id say those are pretty reliable sources.
@@embreyd4e686 Not to get in the middle of this discussion, but oral histories are the most Faulty form of knowledge keeping.
Have you never played the game where 1 person tells another a short story and that person tells another, etc, etc.
Never comes out the same at the other end. And its only minutes old. Imagine 20 or 30 tellings over 100 years.
I'm sure you trust your dad but all humans are susceptible to embellishment and misremembering.
British sailors also ate sea biscuits or hardtack Theirs often contained bugs.
Buffalo jump was a hunting method not a hunting party. The jump is when they ran them off a cliff. They most certainly did not use all the animal. Sometimes hundreds would die at the jumps and so much rotting meat and whole animals were left behind that they would spontaneously combust. There are Buffalo jump monuments and parks across the west..many of the cliffs had burn and scorch marks from the burning animals.
Hardtack has also been a staple in the diet of sailors all across the world since back when sea travels took years up until the invention of steam and modern ships. Sometimes it was the only food available on the ship….and since as you said it has zero nutritional value, it made the travel even more miserable.
very informative!
Anything they could forage, hunt or hienze backed beans with chopped vienna pinkies.
Pemmican is so much more nutritional than hardtack. I'm sure the people who hardtack had all kinds of mineral and vitamin deficiencies.
2023 will see a resurgence of hard tack.
Interesting video but it had nothing to do with what cowboys ate in the old West.
Hey what about the cowboys diet?
Not very accurate. 1 mistake is it claims that pheasant was eaten. Pheasants were introduced & not native to America.
Easy..they ate vittles
Grub, they are grub.
While interesting, this didn't mention cowboys or their diet.
But was the pemmican meat cooked?
No. Its dried jerkey ground up with other ingredients
Cowgirls?
Trail kill.