A:- Cowboy and Western Food Ideas (Make-Ahead)
Our selection of party recipe ideas is largely make-ahead so that they don't interfere with the smooth running of your party.
A1:- Ideas for Authentic Food
To give your party food an authentic feel, consider what cowboys and those living in Western cowtowns actually ate.
Range of foods: Texas, Mexican and American Frontier food.
Cowboy trail food: while on the trail, the cowboys' diet consisted largely of beef, salt pork or bacon, potatoes, pinto beans, sourdough biscuits, bread or flapjacks and strong, thick black coffee. They also ate dried fruit.
American Frontier food: available vegetables included potatoes, sweetcorn, onions, tomatoes, and squash. (Laura Ingalls Wilder's books show that pioneers also cultivated carrots, peas, peppers, pumpkins, cabbages, beets and turnips. See link.) Nuts included pecans and almonds. Fruit included apples, apricots, cherries and peaches. Chilis and molasses were used for flavorings.
A2:- Some Suggested Party Recipes With an Old Western or Cowboy Theme
Starters
- Mexican cheese dip with tortillas, cornbread or Pringles - easy to make ahead
- Avocado salsa
- Southwest beef lettuce wraps
- Nachos - top with salsa, Mexican cheese and Jalapaneos and then cook in a pre-heated oven or under a pre-heated grill and serve with guacamole and sour cream.
- Spicy bean salad
Main Course Ideas
- Make your own taco bar - supply a mix of tacos and tortillas and a selection of tasty and pre-prepared fillings for an easy buffet
- Cowboy Chili - for authenticity, serve with cornbread or tortillas; alternatively, serve with baked potatoes and sour cream
- Lasagne - normal or add a Mexican twist by adding tortillas and guacamole or make a Chili Tortilla Bake
- Beef Enchiladas topped with Cheddar cheese
- Cornbread topped chilli beef pe
- Beef or buffalo stew - cornmeal dumplings optional
- Beef pie
- Meatloaf
- Black bean stuffed peppers
- Meatballs in tomato sauce with pasta
- Chips or sweet potato chips sprinkled with Cajun spice seasoning mix and served with sour cream
- Braised red cabbage
- Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas
- Cornbread muffins
- Mini sweetcorns
- Beans with molasses or Bourbon
- Texan potato salad
- Corn dodgers
Dessert Ideas
- Jalapeno corn cupcakes
- Apple cobbler or dumplings
- Sourdough bread pudding
- Sweet potato and whiskey pie; pumpkin pie; vinegar pie; fruit pie (apple, cherry, peach, plum or pear)
- Mormon Johhnycake
- American Frontier pudding
- Molasses cake or flapjacks
A3:- Modern Ideas with Cowboy Names
- Take a dish such as Mexican Dip and turn it into a cowboy-themed dish by calling it "Buckaroo Dip" or "Cowboy's Favourite".
- Make easy but effective Cowboys' Hats by using Pringles for the hat base, putting salsa in the middle and then adding a hat-shaped portion of cheese on top; a tray of these can look really impressive.
- Call beef stew "Chuck Stew" or "Son of a Gun" stew. (Charles Goodnight invented the chuckwagon for cooks to carry food supplies on those long cattle trails; cowboys called a stew made out of various parts of a calf such as brains, sweetbreads, heart, liver and tongue a Son of a Bitch stew - or Son of a Gun stew if they were being polite.)
- Turn a punch of your choice into a cowboy-themed drink by calling it "Cowpunch Punch".
Menu for Bonnie's party
A4:- Simply Add Decorations to Turn Normal Food into Western-inspired Food
- Campfire Cupcakes or Campfire large cake - make chocolate cupcakes or a large cake, then top with chocolate buttercream; use slivers of chocolate flakes for logs and then stiff orange and red buttercreams piped to resemble fire.
- Rice Krispie and Shredded Wheat "hay bales".
- Arrange salad items in the form of a wagon wheel.
B:- Drinks
Contrary to popular belief, beer was the most popular drink in the saloons on the American Frontier - a hard-up cowhand could nurse a single drink for several hours. Spirits included rum, gin and whiskey. That said, wealthy establishments did have access to aged Bourbon and even champagne and French wines. On the cattle trail, cowboys drank strong black coffee.
Try using the drinks labels provided with the decoration pack to turn ordinary drinks into "wild west" ones.
Selection of drinks where bottles are covered with drinks' labels from decoration pack
C:- What if I Don't Like Cooking?
No problem. It is a good idea to give your guests some sort of nourishment during the game, but it doesn't have to fancy. (After all, cowboys were given some pretty basic food during their long cattle drives.) We've found that friends are pleased to be invited to the game and often offer to make a dish, either dessert or starter.
If you don't want to cook, then why not make a list of possible western or cowboy dishes (see above) and ask each of your guests to bring a dish? You can then have a pot-luck buffet.
Alternatively, if you fancy a takeaway, burgers or a Mexican takeaway would blend with the theme.
Bonnie and Ray cooked a superb menu for their party guests while running our Murder in the Wild West game. They served a Southwest wagon wheel with quick draw poppers for starters; then they made a chuckwagon stew and buttermilk biscuits; for dessert, they served a fresh blackberry cobbler and homemade vanilla icecream. Her lucky guests washed this down with peach tea and root beer. See Bonnie's Wild West Party for further details.
Bonnie's meal from left: Southwest wagon wheel with quick draw poppers; chuckwagon stew with buttermilk biscuits; blackberry cobbler and homemade vanilla icecream
For our murder mystery game launch party, we made a starter based loosely upon the bacon that cowboys ate on their trail rides and the molasses that some cowboys used to mix with their beans. Nigella Lawson has a superb recipe for slow-cooked black treacle ham (see here) that we used; the advantage of this is that it can be made in advance and then carved just before the party. We paired this with a potato salad and bread roll. (To be more authentic, we should have used Texan potato salad and cornbread but one of our party had food allergies and so we kept the food simple.) We had the starters after Round 2 of the game.
For the main course, we relied on those other staples of wild west food: beef and corn. We served chuckwagon stew (aka beef stew) with baby sweetcorns. Again, we were able to do most of the preparation the day before the party: we made the stew, mashed the potato and put the potatoes in a wide oven-proof dish. We also prepared the root vegetables for roasting. On the day of the party, we reheated the stew and the vegetables while we played rounds 3 and 4 of the game; we also boiled the kettle after finishing the starters so that it could be quickly reboiled and the boiling water used to quickly cook the peas and baby sweetcorn.
For dessert, a wonderful friend brought the best apple cobbler we have ever tasted! We had dessert and coffee after finishing the game and listening to the Audio Solution.
Our test party food from left: slow-cooked ham in black treacle with potato salad; chuckwagon stew with baby sweetcorns, mashed potato and root vegetables; apple cobbler and shortbread biscuits