For The Best Baked Beans, Make Them Cowboy-Style
If someone offered you a plate of chuckwagon beans, you could be forgiven for looking a bit puzzled. Fear not, fellow foodies: it's merely another name for cowboy baked beans, a dish that combines a couple of the ingredients cowboys regularly ate on the trail. Although there are some menu items from way back when that we'd happily sidestep, cowboy-style baked beans aren't among them. A long-standing staple of Texan cuisine, it combines canned beans with a generous helping of thick-cut bacon or salt pork, a tip of the ten-gallon hat to the "overland trout" that 19th-century chuck wagons carried on their long journeys.
Take one taste, and it's easy to see why this bean-based dish was so popular with hungry cowboys and has stood the test of time. The salty pork is a pop of flavor against the creamy, sweet background of the baked beans, and both deliver a hefty protein boost for a long day in the saddle (or office chair). Old-timey bacon was more heavily cured than modern kinds, and while salted pork is a delicious extra, we think the guys on the trail would have loved to get their hands on the range of bacon available today. That variety means we can subtly alter the taste profile of home-made cowboy-style beans, adding more smoke flavors or fat to the mix as we see fit.
Too much salt in your cowboy-style beans? Don't worry, there's an authentic alternative
It's not just the bacon that offers a lot of leeway to experimenting with cowboy-style baked beans, either. Switching up the beans themselves can dramatically change the look and texture of the dish (we love the versatility of black beans), and there are a zillion ways to zhuzh up the sauce. Chiles are an authentic addition if you want to stick to Wild West ingredients, but a splash of your favorite hot sauce will work, too. If you prefer your baked beans with more sweetness to offset really salty bacon, try stirring in a dash of honey to balance it out. Meanwhile, a slug of barbecue sauce can help amp up the smoky taste.
We know now that cowboys likely ate way too much salt and sugar – this tooth-aching dessert was a particular fave — so for anyone watching their sodium intake, we'd suggest that cowboy-style baked beans should be enjoyed in moderation. Of course, you can make it with low-sodium and/or low-sugar beans, but all that will be undone by adding chunks of bacon or salted pork, or sugary BBQ sauce. If you want an alternative meat protein, try subbing in hamburger meat or shredded beef. It also gives a deep flavor boost to proceedings, and you can suggest that the cowboys did it, too.