Ranch Style Beans

Subject: Ranch Style Beans Fri 20 Jul 2007, 2:14 pm

Call me ignorant, but I hadn't known that Ranch Style Beans were 'old' till I found a recipe calling for their usage in a 1951, Dallas-produced cookbook. Sure, I'd driven past the plant in Fort Worth, but never really wondered about the history of the product that was cooked-up and canned there. And I love Ranch Style beans!

One of the sites linked to below traces the canned beans' origin to Denison in 1872. When was the plant moved southward to Fort Worth (ca. 1935, perhaps?)? Who was their first cook and designer of their recipe?

In any event, the factory in Fort Worth evidently is closing or has done so already.

http://www.armyofmom.com/2006/09/tribute-to-ranch-style-beans.html

http://www.texascooking.com/features/oct2004halloweenie.htm

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_km4467/is_200705/ai_n19103486
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The woman of the frontier made the best of her situation, for she had developed a respect for the land that gave her freedom as well as the courage to live in it.
~~~ from the perspective of Anne Seagraves

Subject: Re: Ranch Style Beans Sun 22 Jul 2007, 1:15 pm

I didn't either ! Do you think they could have been cooked up by a cowboy's chuckwagon ? They're good, but not like my momma's Razz

Trailblazer Joined : 29 May 2007 Posts : 88

I think they were "designed" to mimic chuck-wagon cooking as closely as could be in a commercial product of the time. I also suspecrt that the original recipe wouldn't be recognized in todays product. And I doubt taht the original commercially canned beans were very close to the inspirational prototype, eiher.

Any more than current Wolf Brand Chili is all that close (if memory doesn't mislead me - it may) to what came out of a can with that label when I was a kid. Soembody correct me if I mis-remember - but didn't Wolf Brand start out in Corsicana?