Montana - The Treasure State, State flower: Bitterroot

1. Cowboy Salad
2. Warbonnet Stew
3. Camp Dumplings for Warbonnet Stew
4. Corn Oysters
5. Broiled Eggplant
6. Cowboy Soda Biscuits
7. Dried Apple Pie

Warbonnet Stew

Also known as "Wahoo" and "Rock Mountain" stews.

15 lbs stewing beef
½ cup flour
1 tall can evaporated milk
3 or 4 onions, thinly sliced
Salt
Pepper
Dumplings as made with 10 cups flour

Cut beef into 2" cubes. Dust with flour, pepper and fry, actually sear it, slowly in a Dutch oven, or in Bourgeat's 8.5 qt. copper and stainless casserole pan, letting it form its own grease. After 15 to 20 minutes add water to almost cover it, cover with lid and move to a low heat. Allow it to cook for about 3 hours. Remove the meat to another pan to keep warm.

Blend the flour with the canned milk and add it to the liquid in the first pan. You should now have about 4" light gravy. Season the gravy to taste.

Add the onions and allow them to cook for a few minutes while the dumplings are being mixed. (Dumpling dough should be very pasty.)

When dumplings are mixed, dip a large spoon in the hot gravy and with the gravy covered spoon cut a generous portion of the dough with it and immerse the spoon in the gravy pan. Tap the laden spoon on the bottom of the gravy pan until the dumpling is released. Repeat the process, dipping the spoon each time and immersing the dough into the pan again. When the pot seems full of dumplings, go ahead and poke the spoon through to the bottom and keep it up until the dough is all used. Cover and steam slowly for 15 minutes. The dumplings will rise very high and quite likely push up the lid of the pan. You will now have a pot full of dumplings top to bottom, all gravy disappeared!

Some old-time camp cooks attribute the name "Warbonnet Stew" to the bursting spread of dumplings which could be likened to an Indian's headdress, but one said this was too fanciful, that it was merely a favorite recipe of a cook working on the old Warbonnet ranch in Montana's Little Rockies. Men in the southern ranges called it "Rocky Mountain" because it was a favorite in the northern mountain regions; "Wahoo", apparently a cowboy's expression of pure delight. A large helping of the beef stew with a dumpling on top, big as two fists, was as good a dish as a cook wagon ever offered.

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