Did cowboys eat or they got along on whiskey and chewing tobacco? Let’s make chicken fajitas to live through the past, one bite at a time!
While many of us associate cowboy life with riding on a horseback from town to town and shooting bad guys for survival, in reality being a cowboy involved being around a lot of cows.
Who were the cowboys?
Although movies tend to skimp on this important aspect, and many fails to remotely associate the main leads with the profession’s main job description such as herding cattle from one place to another.
Being a cowboy wasn’t the best paying jobs nor the safest around. Men and women (yes, woman too(even black woman)) on the job had to learn to protect themselves or more importantly the cattle and the money that was involved with the trade; so naturally guns were involved.
It’s the weakness of the human mind that we are more interested in the smoking gun fights and dramatic camera close ups than the fascinating details of the cattle trade. Sure enough, there were squabbles and misunderstanding or sometimes a native American attack or two, but most of the time cowboys were just sitting on horses, herding cattle.
Did cowboys eat too?
Many of us doesn’t even know -although probably guess- that herding hundreds or thousands of cattle involved a lot more than just a couple of guys riding towards the sunset. Moving a bunch of cows over hundreds of miles was a complex operation at times when even sending a text involved horses and “take away” meant to take the dinner away where it was shot and butcher it at the campfire.
Hence, working on the trail meant not only people who are herding the cattle but those that were responsible for various other tasks such as testing water, breaking in the wild horses or butchering and cooking for the staff.
Probably the most surprising, for those who have grown up on cowboy movies, is that cowboys didn’t just drink at the bar but needed to eat too. The most obvious choice, of course, was to use the cows at hand or sometimes hunt if people were for a change of flavor.
What did real cowboys eat?
Most likely not many of us have done or even seen any kind of butchering nowadays but it isn’t really a coincidence that the grocery stores are full of processed meat that can contain anything from skin to bones.
Clean cut meat only accounts about 40% of the whole animal, which means more than a half of the cow is lost on parts, that are still edible but less desirable. The modern food industry tries to use up everything that they can, so they process the leftover parts and make it more desirable. But they weren’t always around.
Before industrializes food production, people had to butcher their own food and on salvage what they could as they could. Around the cowboys that meant giving heads, hides and entrails to the Spanish speaking cowboys as part of their pay and not bothering with them anymore.
It’s the irony of the fate what was once looked down on, became more desirable than what it was made of. As much as we are happily pay meat price or even more for processed meat, we actively seeking out the meat cuttings that not so long-ago men happily got rid of.
What is Fajita?
Fajita simply means stripes and refers to the shape of the meat the dish was first made of. Originally, it was the Spanish speaking cowboys’ (known as “vaqueros” that literally means “jeans”) favorite dish over the years became a national Tex-Mex phenomenon.
As much as black cowboys had to do most of the dirty jobs on the trail, like water testing and horse breaking, it wasn’t out of pure desire that the Spanish speaking cowboys dug fajitas but rather out of necessity.
They made the best out of it making various stews or cutting up the trimming to stripes and barbecuing them. For years, not many people were familiar or interested in fajitas. Most likely because few had any idea about their existence outside of the families and friends of the cowboys.
How were chicken fajitas born?
The 60’s brought many changes to the world, including elevating fajitas from their obscurity. Sure, the first restaurant offering fajitas wasn’t as fascinating as seeing the first Earthrise as the Apollo 8 crew observed.
Maybe this is why fajitas needed a couple of decades to spread across the continent, comparing to a couple of minutes it took the Earthrise image spread across the globe on the TV networks.
Yet, fajitas are everywhere now and thanks to its simple universal name, we don’t have to bridle ourselves what we do with it. Making stripes from any food is as easy as making it from beef, so no wonder that we can make fajitas from anything from vegetables to chickens.
Ingredients
- 3 pieces / 600g Bell peppers (red, yellow, green)
- 4 tablespoons / 60ml Cooking oil (or lard)
- 1 medium / 150g Onion (sliced)
- 1 teaspoon / 5g Salt
- 1 lb / 500g Chicken (sliced)
- 1 teaspoon / 5g Salt
- 3 cloves Garlic (diced)
- 1 teaspoon / 3g Paprika or chili
How to make Chicken fajitas
- Stem and slice the peppers. If a couple of seeds remain on the flesh, it’s not a big deal but try to remove most of them as they tend to burn quickly in the hot oil.
- In a skillet, heat oil to high and saute the sliced peppers until they start to collapse, about 3 – 5 minutes.
- Add the sliced onion and salt then saute until the onions get a glassy / translucent look for about 3 -5 minutes.
- Remove the vegetables and add the slices of meat and salt.
- Sear the meat on one side until golden brown then flip it over after 3 – 5 minutes.
- Sear the other side too until golden brown for 3 – 5 minutes.
- Mix the onion and pepper back then top it with the diced garlic and paprika or chili. Saute for 5 more minutes then remove from the heat and let it cool off.
- Serve it on corn tortillas, flour tortillas or just have it on its own.
Enjoy!
Chicken Fajita Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 pieces Bell peppers red, yellow, green
- 4 tablespoons Cooking oil or lard
- 1 Onion sliced
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1 lb Chicken sliced
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 3 cloves Garlic diced
- 1 teaspoon Paprika or chili
Instructions
- Stem and slice the peppers. If a couple of seeds remain on the flesh, it’s not a big deal but try to remove most of them as they tend to burn quickly in the hot oil.
- In a skillet, heat oil to high and saute the sliced peppers until they start to collapse, about 3 – 5 minutes.
- Add the sliced onion and salt then saute until the onions get a glassy / translucent look for about 3 -5 minutes.
- Remove the vegetables and add the slices of meat and salt.
- Sear the meat on one side until golden brown then flip it over after 3 – 5 minutes.
- Sear the other side too until golden brown for 3 – 5 minutes.
- Mix the onion and pepper back then top it with the diced garlic and paprika or chili. Saute for 5 more minutes then remove from the heat and let it cool off.
- Serve it on corn tortillas, flour tortillas or just have it on its own.
Notes
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