Dinner
Camp Cowboy Stew
A stupidly hearty pot of beef, bacon, smoked sausage, potatoes and beans built for cold nights at camp.
Ground beef, crispy bacon, smoked sausage, potatoes, beans, corn and tomatoes simmered together in one Dutch oven until thick, smoky and ridiculously filling. Easy enough for camp and big enough to feed a hungry crew.
This one is already easy at camp but it gets almost stupidly easy if the knife work is done before you leave.
Dice the onion, mince the garlic, cube the potatoes and slice the sausage at home.
Cut the bacon and keep it in its own container since it goes into the Dutch oven first.
You can also measure all of the dry seasonings into one small container. Keep the flour separate because it goes in after the spices.
Once you are at camp, the entire recipe becomes brown meat, open cans, dump stuff into pot and drink something while it simmers.
Dutch oven with a fitted lid
Camp stove or campfire setup
Long spoon or spatula
Slotted spoon
Ladle
Knife and small cutting board if you did not prep everything at home
Can opener, because discovering you forgot one after bringing four cans is bullshit
Heat-resistant gloves
Bowls and spoons
Prepared ingredients
Extra beef broth
Optional toppings
Do the browning stages over a steady medium fire or a concentrated bed of coals.
Once all the liquid goes into the Dutch oven and the stew reaches a simmer, move it to gentler heat. You want occasional lazy bubbles, not a volcanic eruption.
If your Dutch oven supports coals on the lid, putting some heat above the pot helps even everything out. Keep more heat above than directly underneath once the stew is simmering.
Rotate the Dutch oven every so often and scrape the bottom whenever you stir. Thick stews love finding one hot spot and burning there.
Ingredients
Meat
Bacon starts the whole thing because its rendered fat becomes the cooking oil for the sausage, onion and beef. Do not clean the pot between steps. All that browned stuff is flavor.
Vegetables & Beans
Keep the potatoes around ½-inch so they cook through without turning the rest of the pot into paste.
Broth & Seasoning
This is supposed to be thick and somewhere between stew and chili, not soup. Start with the listed broth. You can always loosen it later.
Everything else
One item per line. Paste it into a note, select the lines and tap the checklist button to make them tickable.
Cooking the Cowboy Stew
This recipe is built around one Dutch oven and layers of browned flavor.
Do not rush the meat. Bacon goes first, sausage and onion go into the bacon fat, then the beef gets browned in the same pot. Once the liquid goes in, the hard work is basically over.
If you are cooking over a campfire or coals, you want steady medium heat for the browning stages and gentler heat once the stew is simmering. A raging fire underneath a thick stew is how you weld dinner to the bottom of your Dutch oven.
Render the bacon
Put the bacon into a cold Dutch oven.
Set it over medium heat and cook for about 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the bacon is browned and crisp and plenty of fat has rendered out.
Use a slotted spoon to move the bacon into a bowl. Leave the bacon fat in the Dutch oven.
Start with a cold pot
Starting the bacon cold gives the fat time to render before the outside gets blasted with heat. You get crispier bacon and plenty of fat for the rest of the cook.
Do not dump the bacon grease
Unless there is an absurd amount in there, keep it. That fat is what we are using to brown the sausage, onion and beef.
Brown the sausage and onion
Add the sliced kielbasa and diced onion directly to the bacon fat.
Cook for about 6 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sausage has browned on both sides and the onion is soft and beginning to caramelize.
Move the sausage and onion into the bowl with the bacon.
Give the sausage some contact time
Do not stir it every five seconds. Let those cut sides sit against the Dutch oven long enough to actually brown.
The brown stuff stays in the pot
Every batch leaves another layer of browned flavor behind. Once the broth and tomatoes go in, all of that gets pulled back into the stew.
Brown the beef
Add the ground beef to the Dutch oven.
Break it into small chunks and cook over medium heat until deeply browned and almost no pink remains, about 7 to 8 minutes.
If there is a ton of grease in the pot, spoon some out. Leave enough behind to keep everything happy.
Brown it, do not gray it
Let the beef sit against the hot pot between stirs. Constantly moving it around gives you steamed ground beef instead of actual browning.
Wake up the garlic and spices
Add the garlic, chili powder, smoked paprika, cumin, parsley, salt and black pepper to the beef.
Cook for about 60 seconds, stirring constantly, until the garlic and spices smell ridiculous.
Sprinkle the flour evenly over the beef and stir until no dry patches remain.
Cook for another minute.
Garlic burns fast
Once the garlic and spices go in, stay at the pot. One minute is plenty. Burnt garlic will bully every other flavor in the stew.
Toast the spices first
Giving the spices a minute in the hot beef fat wakes them up before all the liquid goes in.
Build the stew
Return the bacon, sausage and onion to the Dutch oven.
Add the potatoes, baked beans, corn, diced tomatoes, Rotel, beef broth and Worcestershire sauce.
Stir everything together well and scrape the bottom of the Dutch oven as you go.
Bring the stew just to a boil.
Scrape up the good stuff
The browned bits stuck to the bottom are not a problem. Once the liquid goes in, scrape them loose and stir them back into the stew.
Do not turn it into soup
This should be thick. Resist the urge to dump in extra broth unless it actually needs it after simmering for a while.
Simmer it low and slow
Once the stew begins bubbling, reduce the heat to low or medium-low and cover the Dutch oven.
Simmer for about 50 to 55 minutes, stirring every 10 to 15 minutes so nothing catches on the bottom.
It is done when the potatoes are fork-tender and the broth has thickened into a rich, chunky stew.
Watch the bottom over a fire
Campfire heat is not as polite as a kitchen burner. Rotate the Dutch oven and stir all the way across the bottom so one hot spot does not scorch the whole batch.
Give it the full simmer
The potatoes need the time but so does everything else. The broth thickens and the smoky meat, beans, tomatoes and spices stop tasting like separate ingredients.
Taste it before touching the salt
Remove the lid and give the stew a good stir.
Taste it before adding anything.
Add more salt, black pepper or chili powder only if it actually needs it. If the stew is thicker than you want, stir in a splash of beef broth.
Let it simmer uncovered for another 5 minutes if it needs to tighten up.
There is already a lot of salt in here
Bacon, sausage, broth, beans and canned tomatoes all bring salt to the party. Taste the finished stew before automatically adding more.
Load up a bowl
Kill the heat and let the stew sit for 5 to 10 minutes before serving.
Spoon it into big bowls and let everybody handle their own toppings.
Green onions, cheddar, sour cream and hot sauce are all fair game.
Cornbread belongs next to this
You absolutely do notneedanother side but warm cornbread for dragging through the bottom of the bowl is hard to argue with.
Cowboy stew is one of those meals that gets better after sitting overnight. The original recipe makes the same point about the flavors developing after a day or two.
Cool leftovers promptly and keep them refrigerated.
When reheating, add a small splash of beef broth if the stew has thickened too much.
I would not make freezing the fully finished stew part of the plan. Potatoes tend to get weird and grainy after freezing and thawing. The source recipe gives the same warning.
This recipe comfortably feeds about 10 hungry people.
For a big camp with 15 or so people, make a 1½ batch if your Dutch oven has the room:
3 lb ground beef
12 slices bacon
21 oz smoked sausage
About 2¼ lb potatoes
1½ cans each of the beans, corn, tomatoes and Rotel
2¼ cups beef broth
For a crowd bigger than that, I would rather run two Dutch ovens than pack one so full that you cannot properly brown anything or stir it without launching stew into the fire.
This is already meat, potatoes, beans and vegetables in one bowl so it does not need much help.
Cornbread is the obvious move.
Crusty bread works too, especially if you want something to drag through whatever is left in the bowl.
For toppings, put out shredded cheddar, sour cream, sliced green onions and hot sauce and stay out of everybody's way.
Where this came from
- Inspired bymy friends Alex & HeatherBuilt from photos of their creation in 2025
Cook's notes
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