Wyoming Cuisine: Recipes

Wyoming is great state to get for a food project. A convergence of people from many cultures offers several tasty options.

By 1851 wagon trains carrying prospectors and a few settlers began coming to Wyoming. The prospectors were heading west in search of gold, and the settlers came to establish farms...While the settlers were building their homesteads and planting crops, they subsisted on braised bear meat, venison steak, hominy cooked with dried beef, and sometimes rice with honey and cinnamon. Pioneer women soon became experts at improvising, For coffee they roasted anything that would turn brown over a fire. They used a Dutch oven for everything from boiling water to baking cakes...People came to Wyoming from all over the world. Before 1900 there were already 47 different nationalities represented in Rock Springs...There was a French bakery that make fluffy croissants and rich eclairs. The owner of the Greek candy shop baked almond cakes, spice bars, and made halvah, a type of pudding. The Chinese restaurant served sweet-and-sour pork and wonton soup. The Germans made Wiener schnitzel and cheesecake, and the Norwegians prepared cold fruit soups. Since the late 1800s, when the Chinese came to work on the railroads, there has been an Oriental influence on Wyoming's cooking. This influence expanded when the Japanese, who were interned in Wyoming during World War II, began to farm the land...Farming started in Wyoming in the mid-1850s when a group of Mormons arrived in a wagon train at Fort Supply in the southwestern corner of the state. They brought seeds, herds of cattle, flocks of chickens, and plentiful food supplies.