Cowboy Stew

Meaty, delicious, and filling, this recipe is a classic for a reason. Cowboy stew is so nourishing and packed with ingredients; it can’t help but leave you feeling full.

Serve with Jiffy cornbread, cheese bread or cornbread muffins for the perfect dinner.

Cowboy Stew

Sometimes, when you are out somewhere far away from civilization and needing nourishment, the best dish is something warm, hearty, and filling.

This is why this stew has such a fitting name; you can’t just imagine cowboys across the Western prairies of North America cooking this in a giant pot or in a cast iron pan over an open fire.

Packed to the brim with meat, beans, potatoes, and vegetables, this is the kind of dish that contains all of the calories you could possibly need for an entire day out on the ranch or cattle rustling.

While the original recipe was likely prepared with a lot of slapdash, fast cooking, meaning mostly just chuck everything in the pot and let it cook, there is nothing stopping you from putting a few extra tweaks and touches onto this recipe to make it extra special.

Cowboy Stew Ingredients

Make sure you look at the recipe card at the very bottom for the exact amounts so that you know exactly what to buy for this recipe.

• Ground beef

• Kielbasa sausage

• Garlic

• Onion

• Russet potatoes

• Can of diced tomatoes

• Diced tomatoes with green chili peppers (like Rotel)

• Can of pinto beans

• Whole kernel corn

• Frozen mixed vegetables

• Chicken stock

• Ground cumin

• Chili powder

• Salt & pepper

How To Make Cowboy Stew

• Cook the ground beef and onions in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Break up the meat to make sure that there aren’t any clumps.
• Cook and stir until the meat is no longer pink and the onion has softened and is transluscent.

• Drain off the grease, and then transfer to a large pot

• Add the sausage and garlic to the skillet. Saute for 2 minutes until the garlic is fragrant.
• Drain off the grease, and transfer the meat mixture to a large pot.
• Pour the large can of diced tomatoes and diced tomatoes with chilies into the pot with the meat.
• Stir then add in the potatoes, pinto beans, corn, mixed vegetables and chicken stock.
• Season with cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper.
• Cover, and simmer over medium-low heat for at least 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Should You Cook Your Cowboy Stew Longer?

This stew has a pretty quick cook time as far as most stews go. Other than the browning of the meats and the specific steps in adding ingredients, this cowboy stew recipe cooks in under an hour.

There is nothing particularly wrong with cooking it longer, however. In fact, cooking it longer might actually result in some really great flavor development, especially over a longer time.

To cook this stew longer, lower the heat a tad and let it go until the beef is nice and soft and the sausage has rendered out all of its leftover fat and become super malleable and tasty.

Don’t cook it all day, though; even if it is tempting to leave your stew cooking for 10 hours, after a certain point, you will begin to hit points of diminishing returns.

If you cook it too long, the meat will start to get particularly chewy and overdone, resulting in some pretty bad textures, as well as the beans turning to mush.

So while you can certainly cook this recipe longer if you want to, make sure that you don’t take it too far.

Can You Freeze Your Leftover Cowboy Stew For Later?

Stews are a type of recipe that seems to be pretty much begging to be prepared in bulk and freeze the leftovers for dinner the next day.

Not only does it save you time in cooking prep, as you front load all of your work into one big cooking session, but it can save you a lot of money as well!

However, this recipe might be a bit tricky to freeze because it already contains potatoes. Potatoes are a bit of a tricky food to freeze because they have a tendency to expand when freezing and then turn into mush.

To avoid this, consider skipping the potatoes in this recipe and then adding the potatoes back in once the stew is reheated!

You can either use canned potatoes or just quickly boil some potatoes for when the stew is done reheating.

Looking for more delicious Stew recipes? Try these out:

• Meatball Soup

• Instant Pot Beef Stroganoff

• Beef Tips and Gravy

Enjoy!

Love,

Karlynn

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