Cowboy Beans

Before we get to the Beans the subject of
Bacon has to be part of the conversation.

Definitions:
Cured: preserved meat or fish by means of smoking, drying, salting, or pickling until cooked without using fire directly applied to the meats or fish.

Back Meat: the sides and back of the pig.
     
Bacon: 1) From Boucan; A part of the frame used in smoking and/or drying meat/fish.
             2) Back meat salted and smoked until cured

Remuda: A small herd of horses that are saddle ready and from which cowboys choose the horse they will use that day. From the Spanish "to change horses."

The word bacon became the more widely used term thanks to shipwrecked sailors who made their way to various Caribbean islands and since live pigs were carried on ships for food, they too made it shore. Ultimately the pigs were slaughtered, then smoked and cured and traded to passing ships for the things needed for further survival.

The phrase "back meat" was the common usage for most Europeans and of course those men and women who settled in America.

However, it is easy to see why the word bacon became the more popular name if you just imagine yourself in Texas in the post Civil War years and you walk into a Café and order back meat and eggs over easy; no telling what you might be served.

The Beans: Cowboy Beans were usually Pinto beans but red beans and navy beans were also in use during those early days of the Western Frontier.

There were two ways the cowboy had his beans:

If you were a loner and just drifting, you would stop near a creek (if you were from East of the Mississippi) or crick (if you were raised West of the Mississippi). The loner would wash a double handful of beans in the crick and toss them into a pot of boiling water and when tender he would drain most of the water, add the drippings from the bacon he'd already fried and let that cook a bit more then add the now bacon flavored beans to the pan of bacon and eat his dinner. Sometimes he even had some fresh biscuits cooked in a dutch oven or fried bread if not.

The trail drive beans were prepared a little differently: At the beginning of the drive the chuck wagon cook would put about ten pounds or so of beans into a sealable pot or jar and let it soak for the day. When the drive would stop for the night those beans were removed after draining out the water into another pot.(Water was never wasted on these drives but given to the Remuda horses during dry times. Since there were often 5000 head of cattle in the drive it was impossible to water them so if water was within ten miles of the drive after one of these dry camps, the cattle would pick up the smell and stampede toward that water ). Then fresh water was poured over the pot of soaked beans, and added to the pot were wild onions and sometimes dried chili peppers and tomatoes.

A portable iron tripod was then erected over the fire pit and the pot of beans hung over the fire and boiled until tender and most of the water boiled away leaving a nice, slightly thickened, sauce with beans. While the cowboys were eating, the cook would then get the sealable pot readied with fresh beans and water and put aside to be used at the next days stop.

This routine never varied but was sometimes delayed by Indian or Outlaw attacks, Stampedes, or lack of water and dry camp was necessary. More about that in a future Post entitled "The Chuck Wagon."
Dad

Frontier Cooking

Definitions:

Frontier: The border between settled and unsettled lands.

Great Appalachian Mountains: The mountain range East of the Mississippi River; it includes the Great Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Mountains. They run North and South.

Cumberland Gap: The gap in the Cumberland Mountains that allowed heavy wagons laden with trade goods and people through the Mountain range and was the primary means by which the frontier further expanded West.

Much has been written about that time, including the exploits of Daniel Boone and his exploration and adventures in Ohio, where he lived, but the Frontier I want to talk about is the Post Civil War era. "The old West", especially the campfire cooking used by the honest man and outlaw alike.

What they all had in common, and had the added benefit of fitting easily in Saddle Bags was coffee, beans, bacon and flour for biscuits.

This article will start with the coffee.

Prior to Arbuckle Coffee, which was introduced in 1864, the roasting of coffee beans was so erratic that coffee beans were sold green and the buyer had to do the roasting. Just one burnt bean would spoil the whole batch.

John Arbuckle invented a way to consistently roast the beans so that none of them burned or became over-roasted. He then packaged whole beans in one pound bags and sold them. So wildly successful were these beans that at one point he was roasting over 800,000 pounds of beans a year, just to keep up with the demand.

He also patented a "glaze" that was sprayed on the roasted beans that kept them fresh until used and his Brand called Arioso Became known as "cowboy coffee". Today's production also includes Arioso ground coffee, decaf whole beans and decaf ground coffee.

Early coffee was not ground, more accurate is that it was crushed. A handful of beans placed in middle of a square of clothe, folded up into a sort of flat bag, a rock or butt of a revolver was then applied. The crushed result was added to a pot of boiling water and made so strong that in cowboy slang the coffee was only drinkable if it was strong enough to float a horseshoe.

You can still grind your own coffee with an electric coffee grinder or a manual coffee grinder. While the manual grinder can be a little labor intensive, it is well worth having when on a camping trip or when without power, as our early cowboys lived daily.

more to come.

More about Soup

The oldest food prepared by Homo Sapiens was probably meat cooked over an open fire. But I'll bet that not far behind was a good bowl of soup.

Recently, in China, while excavating for an airport, a bronze cooking pot, sealed tightly, was uncovered and when examined by Archeologists the pot was opened and liquid soup was within, along with some bones. Sounds like someone was making stock and just after I had that thought I wondered what had happened that the soup wasn't consumed. The pot dated to 2500 years ago.

Another discovery that dated to 6000 years ago was the recipe for Hippopotamus soup.

More toward the present but long before the Americas were discovered and settled, Europeans had moved fire inside the home by way of a Stone Fireplace and chimney to remove the smoke generated by the burning wood and later, coal. At the sides of the fireplace were imbedded iron rods of varying lengths that held pots of various size but soup was the primary food and remained so for centuries. That same fireplace setup was also used in the Americas and was the principal way to cook meals until the iron stove was invented. The Ben Franklin stove was probably the first. You can probably find a picture of one if you do the search.