Yummly
If you’re not from the southwest, then you might not know what cowboy beans are. This amazing dish combines a lot of different flavors and cuisines, but it’s also so low-maintenance — no one will believe how easy it is to make. Traditionally, a cowboy beans recipe is made with ground beef and pinto beans cooked in a sweet and sour sauce, like barbecue. Sure, there’s no rule against using other types of meat. But even if there was, then we’d be a rule breaker! For our cowboy beans recipe, we use crispy bacon and a selection of beans, including baked beans, lima and kidney beans. To get the perfect blend of sweet and tangy flavors in one pot, we use yellow mustard, cider vinegar, and brown sugar. You can make cowboy beans with ground hamburger meat — or even ground turkey or chicken — but the result will be pretty tame compared to our secret ingredient: [Hillshire Farm® Smoked Sausage](https://www.hillshirefarm.com/products/rope-sausage/smoked-sausage). This pre-cooked rope sausage is made with choice cuts of pork, chicken, and beef, plus traditional spices. The deeply smoky flavors of Hillshire Farm® sausages pair perfectly with bacon and beans. Hillshire Farm® has offers a variety of smoked-sausage products, like [Chicken Smoked Sausage Roasted Garlic](https://www.hillshirefarm.com/products/rope-sausage/chicken-smoked-sausage-roasted-garlic/), [Cheddarwurst Smoked Sausage](https://www.hillshirefarm.com/products/link-sausage/cheddarwurst-smoked-sausage), and [Hillshire Farm® Naturals Uncured Polska Kielbasa](https://www.hillshirefarm.com/products/rope-sausage/naturals-uncured-polska-kielbasa), which is made with cuts of pork and chicken. For the uninitiated, kielbasa isn’t some kind of fancy spice that you shake over your links. It’s a style of sausage that’s popular in Poland. Back in the olden days, to make cowboy beans you would just crack open a can of baked beans and add ketchup and barbecue sauce. Today’s recipes have a much more substance — and lots of flavorful ingredients!
