This Cowboy Staple Bread Was A Game Changer On The Trail For Soaking Up Sauce

Life on the range was not easy for a cowboy, and the food they ate illustrates that point. All of their food had to be able to travel with them as they drove huge herds of cattle across the wild country of the American West, and that meant they survived on pretty simple fare. Pots of beans and chili con carne were well-established parts of cowboy cooking, but a lot of their sustenance was similar to what soldiers, long-distance travelers, and frontiersmen had been eating for centuries: some form of simple unleavened bread. In this case, we're not talking about hardtack, but rather a dish called corn dodgers.

Corn dodgers are a basic hot water cornbread (which is different from classic cornbread) made by mixing boiling water with plain cornmeal. If they were available at the time, things like salt and lard or bacon grease could also be added to the mix. Next, this dough was formed into balls or patties and cooked in a skillet — ideally with a bit more bacon grease. It's as basic as food gets, but it kept a cowboy on his feet, and that's the real reason behind the popularity of corn dodgers in the Old West.

Because the ingredient list is so simple and the shelf life so long, corn dodgers were a perfect food for cattlemen. They could be made anywhere and anytime, so long as there was a small campfire to cook them on.

Given the simplicity of this filling foodstuff, it should be no surprise that corn dodgers were not exclusive to the diets of cowboys. They were common throughout the South and frontier country. It is said that Abraham Lincoln was especially fond of them growing up, and George Washington Carver reportedly took them to school for his midday meal. Beyond that, old fashioned corn pone is essentially the same dish by a different name, and hoe cakes and hushpuppies aren't too dissimilar either.

It was common for a group of cowboys on a cattle drive to be supplied by a chuck wagon, a covered wagon full of food that would travel ahead of the herd and set up shop so that a cook could prepare large meals for the hungry workers to eat when they arrived. Some of the most common and best dishes that these chefs made were slow-cooked hearty stews, with proteins like beans and beef. Cooking one big pot of food is a great way to feed a lot of people, but it is best when those diners have a bit of bread with which to sop up all the sauce.

When it came to carb-heavy sides for dipping in the gravy, cowboys also enjoyed traditional West Coast sourdough biscuits on the trail, and a type of fry bread called pan de campo, or cowboy bread. As common and popular as they may have been, corn dodgers were only one of the carb-y companions of the classic campfire meals of the American West.