Beans, beans, the musical fruit: the more you eat, the more you toot!

June 14, 2017 4:27 AM

Okay, I know this is ridiculous, but: in just about every book, movie, or TV show, cowboys eat beans. Chuck wagon cooks make big pots of beans for cowboys on roundups or trail rides, cowboys on their lonesome make beans in their campfires, cowboys in towns eat beans in saloons. So my question is two-fold: did real cowboys really eat beans that much (I'm guessing yes, because they'd be cheap and easy), and if so what kind of beans?
posted by easily confused to Food & Drink (4 answers total)

Best answer: The traditional answer here is pinto beans. They were available in the west, usually from Mexico, and were then cultivated by the earliest European settlers as well. Dried beans store well (forever, really), provide a lot of nutrion, protein and calories for the weight carried, and are easy to cook. Source: My father is an obsessive historian of the Old West, and I live near a major bean producer. The other two essential elements of cowboy cooking are bacon (for pretty much the same reasons as beans) and a Dutch oven.
posted by seasparrow at 4:46 AM on June 14, 2017 [14 favorites]

Best answer: Bacon, Beans, and Galantines: Food and Foodways on the Western Mining Frontier, by Joseph Robert Conlin, might give you some leads.

From True West: "What kind of beans did cowboys cook on the trail?" (A.: pinto beans).

Library of Congress: Beef and Beans. "Beef and beans were the main flue liners. We would have beans and beef for breakfast, then beef and beans for dinner, and at supper time we would get some more beef and beans."

AKA Whistle berries, Pecos strawberries and Fart-n-darts.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:49 AM on June 14, 2017 [9 favorites]

Best answer: Pinto beans are the undoubted answer for the period that included wholesalers and distributors, but in earlier times and even later in isolated, climatically harsher regions, other varieties dominated (and still do). Tepary beans require less water than any other bean during cultivation, so they've been regionally more valuable than the pinto bean (think: Sonoran desert, here's a great paper if you have access). There are dozens of preserved heirloom varieties, and probably many more still out there or lost to history, and each one represents some regional preference or growing/storing advantage. Companies like Rancho Gordo are doing good business popularizing some of these old varietals.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:11 AM on June 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks, y'all.

My only excuse for this question is, my coworkers and I get into some seriously weird discussions.....
posted by easily confused at 12:33 PM on June 14, 2017 [2 favorites]