Cowboy Stew: A hearty soup made of ground beef, kielbasa, bacon, and hearty vegetables, is the perfect soup recipe to feed a crowd or to serve on a cold day. Serve this stew with cheesy biscuits or one of these salads for a crowd, and you’ll have a delicious, rounded-out meal!
What you’ll love about cowboy stew is that it’s not as thick as say, hearty stew recipes such as this beef stew recipe. It’s lighter but yet hearty enough to fill up those bellies for a busy day dinner or a comforting dish for Sunday dinner.
If you’re looking for more dishes for the hungry cowboys in your life (or just those who love cowboy favorites) you’ll also love these cowboy burgers and this cowboy queso.
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🧾 Ingredients Needed
You’ll need the following simple ingredients:
- 6 slices bacon, chopped
- 1 pound ground beef (See more of our other ground beef dinners.)
- 1 (12 ounce) package kielbasa sausage, sliced into rounds
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 teaspoons Chili powder – Adjust spices to your taste, for more heat add additional chili powder.
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 14.5 ounce can Fire Roasted tomatoes
- 15 ounce can Great North beans or other white beans, drained and rinsed
- 4 ounce can chopped green chilies, with liquid
- 32 oz carton of beef stock (4 cups)
- 1 cup frozen corn
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes (approximately 1 ½ cups), diced
- Garnishes: fresh parsley, shredded Monterey jack cheese, sour cream
📖 Substitutions & Variations
- Ground Beef: You can use different kinds of meat, such as ground turkey, ground venison, ground elk, ground chicken, or your favorite ground meat, instead of ground beef.
- Beans: You can use other white beans, such as pinto beans instead of great white northern beans.
- Potatoes: If you’d like to use red potatoes instead of Yukon gold, you can! However, we do not recommend using Russet potatoes as they tend to get too soft in stews.
- Additions: If you’d like to add other times to this cowboy soup, you absolutely can. Some add cumin (which you could add about 1 teaspoon if you love that cumin flavor.) You may want to add items such as black beans, hot sauce for that extra kick, red kidney beans, chili beans, and more!
🍳 Equipment
- A Dutch oven or large stock pot is needed for this easy cowboy stew recipe.
👩🏻🍳 How to Make Cowboy Stew
*Be sure to see the recipe card below for the full ingredients list & instructions!*
- In a dutch oven or large pot cook bacon until crisp. Using a slotted spoon remove bacon and place on paper towel lined plate to drain.
- Add sliced kielbasa to pan with bacon drippings and cook over medium-high heat until browned. Using a slotted spoon remove the kielbasa and place it on a plate with bacon.
- Add ground beef, onion and garlic to pan and cook over medium heat, breaking up the beef with a spoon or spatula and cook until brown and no longer pink. Drain excess grease.
- Return bacon and kielbasa to the pot and add chili powder, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper to the ground beef mixture. Stir for one to two minutes until combined.
- Next, add fire roasted tomatoes, drained beans, canned green chilies, and beef broth to pan. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil then lower eat and simmer.
- Once the beef mixture is at a steady simmer, add potatoes and continue simmering for 20 minutes until the potatoes are soft and cooked through.
- Add frozen corn and peas and simmer for an additional 5 minutes until cooked through.
🥄 How to Serve Cowboy Stew
If desired, garnish with chopped fresh parsley, crushed tortilla strips, cheese, or sour cream.
💭 Recipe Pro Tips
- Make ahead. As with so many soup recipes, like our chili recipe or even taco soup recipe, sometimes soups can be even better the next day because the flavors have had more time to blend together. This cowboy stew recipe is no different.
- Freeze a batch. Soups are one of those dishes that are amazing to make and freezer for a quick meal later. Freezing cowboy stew is a great option for future meal planning or a way to store leftovers. See the tips below for freezing tips.
📋 Recipe FAQs
Cowboy stew is made of bacon, ground beef, and kielbasa for a hearty base. It then usually had vegetables, mixed in with a tomato broth and spices.
Cowboy stew came from Texas! Although this Texas cowboy stew recipe could also be a cowboy soup, it’s called cowboy stew because you combine all of the ingredients in to a stew.
Cowboy stew had thinner consistency, where beef stew tends to have a thicker consistency.
❄️ Storage
Refrigerate: Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 3-4 days.
Freeze: To freeze any leftovers, once cooled, pour cowboy stew in to freezer-safe container and freeze for up to 3 months.
Thaw: When ready to enjoy the frozen stew, place in the refrigerator to thaw. Or, place stew in a stockpot (if you can get it out of the container) and turn on low, and cook until heated through.
🥖 What to Serve with Cowboy Soup
Jalapeno cornbread muffins are delicious, served with this soup. You’d also love having something fun like Texas Toast pizzas as a side with this hearty dish!
Or, if you love sliders, try serving these sloppy joe sliders with it, as we haven’t met a cowboy yet that doesn’t love them!
🍲 More Soup Recipes
If you love soup recipes like this old-fashioned cowboy stew, you’ll also love these:
Did you make this? I’d be so grateful if you left a “star” rating below to let me know what you thought! Then, the next time you need a quick and easy recipe, come back to Fantabulosity to browse all of my easy recipes!
📖 Recipe
Cowboy Stew
Equipment
- Dutch Oven or large stock pot
Ingredients
- 6 slices uncooked bacon chopped
- 1 pound ground beef
- 12 ounces kielbasa sausage sliced into rounds
- 1 medium onion diced
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 2 teaspoons chili powder
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 14.5 ounces can fire roasted tomatoes
- 15 ounces canned great northern beans or other white beans drained and rinsed
- 4 ounces canned chopped green chilies, with liquid
- 32 ounces beef stock or 4 cups
- 1 cup frozen corn
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes (approximately 1 ½ cups), diced
- Optional Garnishes: fresh parsley, shredded monterey jack cheese, tortilla chips, sour cream
Instructions
- In a dutch oven or large pot cook bacon until crisp. Using a slotted spoon remove bacon and place on paper towel lined plate to drain.
- Add sliced kielbasa to pan with bacon drippings and cook over medium heat until browned. Using a slotted spoon remove kielbasa and place on plate with bacon.
- Add ground beef, onion and garlic to pan and cook over medium heat, breaking up the beef with a spoon or spatula and cook until brown and no longer pink. Drain excess grease.
- Return bacon and kielbasa to the pot and add chili powder, smoked paprika, salt and pepper to the ground beef mixture. Stir for one to two minutes until combined.
- Next, add fire roasted tomatoes, drained beans, canned green chilies, and beef broth to pan. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil then lower eat and simmer.
- Once beef mixture is at a steady simmer, add potatoes and continue simmering for 20 minutes until potatoes are soft and cooked through.
- Add frozen corn and peas and simmer for an additional 5 minutes until cooked through.
- Optional: Garnish with chopped fresh parsley, cheese, or sour cream
Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary with brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes and more.
Teresa F says
So good! I made a double batch so we can have leftovers for lunch too!
Sharina says
Had this cowboy stew last night, and it was a hit! So comfy and hearty!
Kristen says
It has been raining here all morning so I made this for our lunch and it was perfect.