Cowboy Stew

This Cowboy Stew is one part Beef Stew, one part Classic Chili, and five parts pure comfort food. Three kinds of meat, hearty vegetables, and bold flavor in a single pot — it’s the kind of dinner that has everyone going back for seconds.

Why You’ll Love This

Three meats, one pot — bacon, kielbasa, and ground beef each bring something different, and together they’re unbeatable
Stick-to-your-ribs hearty — packed with potatoes, beans, corn, and tomatoes, this is a full meal in a bowl
Easy cleanup — everything cooks in one pot, start to finish
Feeds a crowd — this recipe makes a generous batch that stretches beautifully for leftovers
Customizable heat and sweetness — use baked beans for a slightly sweet version or ranch-style beans for something richer and more savory

A Few Notes on Ingredients

The bacon should be regular cut, nothing thick. You’re rendering it for the fat and for the flavor, and thick-cut can get a little chewy sitting in the stew for an hour.
Kielbasa — get the kind in the curve, the smoked kind, not fresh. You’re slicing it into coins and browning it in the bacon drippings and it needs to already be cooked through and smoky. Turkey kielbasa works if that’s what you have. It’s not quite the same but it’s fine.
Ground beef — I use 80/20. Not 90/10, not 85/15. The fat matters here, you’re building flavor and you need it. Drain off some of the excess if it’s truly swimming in grease, but don’t be too aggressive about it.
The tomatoes — petite diced, with the liquid. Don’t drain them. The liquid goes in too. I’ve used crushed tomatoes when that’s all I had, and the texture is a little different but perfectly acceptable.
Sweet corn — and I want to be clear about this because I’ve made the mistake myself — sweet corn is a variety of corn, not regular corn with sugar added. Read the can. It should say “sweet corn” and the ingredient list should just be corn, water, salt. If there’s sugar in the ingredients, that’s not what you want.
Potatoes. Russet. Peeled, cut into half-inch cubes. They’ll soften and thicken the stew as it cooks. Don’t try to use red potatoes or Yukon golds — they hold their shape too well and the texture is off.

Ingredients

4 slices bacon, chopped
2 (12-ounce) packages kielbasa, sliced into half-inch coins
1½ pounds ground beef, 80/20
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced (or 4 — I usually do 4, honestly)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 (14.5-ounce) can petite diced tomatoes, with liquid
2 (16-ounce) cans baked beans or ranch-style beans, with liquid
1 (7-ounce) can chopped green chilies, with liquid
1 (15-ounce) can sweet corn, with liquid
2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cut into half-inch cubes
1 cup water
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

How to Make It

Get your biggest pot out. You need a large Dutch oven or a heavy-bottomed stockpot — this makes a lot of stew.
Start with the bacon. Lay it in the cold pot, turn the heat to medium, and let it render slowly. You want it brown and crispy, not burned. Pull it out with a slotted spoon and set it on a paper towel to drain. Leave every drop of that fat in the pot.
Now add the kielbasa. Brown it on both sides — a few minutes per side — and pay attention to the bottom of the pot. You want golden-brown bits building up down there, what some people call fond. That’s flavor. What you don’t want is for it to burn. Keep the heat at medium, not medium-high. When the kielbasa is nicely browned, pull it out with the bacon.
Add your ground beef, onion, and garlic directly into those drippings. Break up the beef and cook it until it’s no longer pink, stirring the whole mess together with the onion and garlic as it goes. When the beef is cooked through, sprinkle the flour, salt, pepper, and chili powder right over the top. Stir it in and let it cook for about a minute — this gets rid of the raw flour taste and helps thicken the stew later.
Now open all your cans and just add everything. The tomatoes, the beans, the green chilies, the corn — liquid and all. Tuck in the potatoes. Add the bacon and kielbasa back in. Pour in the cup of water. Give it a good stir and bring it up to a boil.
The moment it boils, drop it to a low simmer. Put the lid on. Walk away for an hour, coming back to stir every fifteen minutes or so. The potatoes will soften, the whole thing will thicken up, the flavors will collapse into each other in a way that takes a big pot of separate things and turns it into an actual stew.
If it’s too thick by the end — and sometimes it is, depending on your beans and how high your simmer ran — add a splash of water and stir it in. You want it spoonable but not soupy. Top with parsley before serving.

Variations

You can add a diced jalapeño thrown in with the onion for a little more heat. A can of drained kidney beans on top of the baked beans works well if you want more bean presence. I’ve also seen versions that skip the potatoes entirely and serve it over rice, which sounds kind of good — I keep meaning to try it.

Storage

This keeps beautifully in the fridge for about four days in a sealed container. It will thicken overnight — sometimes significantly — so when you reheat it, add a little water and stir it as it warms up. Don’t rush the reheat or the potatoes get mushy.
If you want to freeze it, leave the potatoes out. They don’t survive the freezer well; they get grainy and weird. Freeze it without them, then when you’re ready to eat, thaw it overnight in the fridge, add some canned potatoes or freshly cooked ones, and reheat from there. It keeps in the freezer for a few months.