Skip Regular Cornbread: Try This Cowboy Staple That Was Popular Back In The Day

It's a common experience to think back on the days of the Old West with a certain haze of romantic nostalgia — you imagine the daring spirit it took for cowboys to rustle cattle, the wide open skies full of stars, and the songs by the campfire at night. The truth of the matter, however, is that cowboy life was hard, and the foods that they ate on the trail were often repetitive, simple fare that was highly limited by wagon capacity and perishability.

Johnnycakes, also called hoe cakes, corn cakes, ash cakes, or cornpones, were born more out of practicality than deliciousness, but somehow, they manage both. Fried cakes of cornmeal and water were ubiquitous in rural areas during the 19th century (Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about them in "Little House in the Big Woods"), and may have had their origins with Native tribes from the Midwest that grew corn as a way of life and experimented with recipes that involved grinding it.

Cowboys may have had only cornmeal and water to make johnnycakes — the name of which may have been a corruption of "journeycakes," since they were made on long trips — with perhaps some molasses or salt if they were lucky, but, today, we have access to many more ingredients and even have stovetops on which to cook our cakes. Just like you can upgrade boxed cornbread in a cast iron skillet, so do simple johnnycakes shine when you give them some crisp in your cast iron. A little sugar goes a long way in the thick batter, which is fried like a taller, denser pancake.

The beauty of johnnycakes is that success with them comes largely by feel, imparting a certain creativity and hands-on tinkering that's authentic to the cowboy spirit. Your ratio of cornmeal to flour can vary depending on how dense you want your cakes to be. Cowboys didn't have leaveners, so you can expect your johnnycakes to be more hearty than a pancake or modern cornbread. While cowboy corn cakes were spartan, we can jazz them up abundantly. Want a savory corncake? How about adding some whole sweet corn to the mixture, some cheese, or maybe even canned jalapeños? On the sweet side of things, you can flavor your corn cakes with maple syrup, molasses (a very traditional choice), or your choice of sugar, then drizzle them with more syrup when they're hot and buttery off the griddle.

You can cook up one big johnnycake and cut it into pieces, much in the style of cowboys around a campfire with a large cast iron griddle, or portion your batter out into cakes the size of silver dollar pancakes. Back in the day, bacon was a frequent accompaniment to johnnycakes, and there's good reason why — the fat from frying the bacon imparted flavor in the cakes when they were cooked up in it right after the meat. We honestly can't argue with that same method today. Corn cakes, bacon, and a pot of strong coffee will certainly fortify you for your own day of hard work, even if mowing the lawn and weeding the garden has nothing on the labor involved in cowboy life on the 19th century trail!