Locally made treats for satisfying Stampede snacking

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Part of the beauty of the Calgary Stampede is that it represents different things to different people. To some, the focus is firmly on the rodeo. For others, Stampede is a non-stop, multi-genre music festival. But for foodies, Stampede is all about the snacks.

You could — and absolutely should — go down to the grounds to indulge in some midway treats and hit up some of the city’s finer free pancake breakfasts throughout the week. But for those days when you feel like getting into the Stampede spirit but aren’t up to heading downtown, these locally produced snacks should do the trick.

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Pioneer Butchery and Charcuterie
Nothing says “cowboy cuisine” like beef jerky, and anyone who has tried local artisanal dried meat knows there’s a world of jerky that goes above and beyond the stuff sold at a typical gas station. One of the newer providers on the market is Pioneer Butchery and Charcuterie, which started its Calgary-based production facility in 2019. The company is a collaboration between two siblings — butcher Greg Dixon and his brother Allan, who runs the business side of things — and chef Taylor Gant.

Gant and Greg Dixon met while working together at the also excellent Empire Provisions and soon started creating their own chef-driven packaged meats. The initial idea was to create products from game meat, but that evolved into sausages, burgers, and charcuterie items made from locally sourced and naturally raised beef and other proteins. Some of Pioneer’s products are good versions of the standards, others are more creative in flavour, but all are made with meat from trusted providers like Spragg’s Meat Shop, Rangeland Bison and various local cattle ranches.

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Which brings us to that jerky. One of Pioneer’s most popular items is its ginger beef jerky — thick-cut strips of dried meat infused with the flavour of Calgary’s most classic Chinese-Canadian dish. The quality is high, the flavour is a nod to Calgary’s local restaurant history, and you can pull it out of your pocket and eat it on the C-Train, at the top of a Ferris wheel, or in the stands during a chuckwagon race. It’s the perfect Stampede snack.

The ginger beef jerky and many of Pioneer’s other Stampede-appropriate items are available at many retail partners including Springbank Cheese, Blush Lane and Our Daily Brett. The brand also runs an outpost store at the family ranch on the Cowboy Trail, overseen by the Dixon’s parents Neil and Elizabeth. For more information about Pioneer and its products or to place an online order, visit pioneeryyc.com.

Doughboy
Tiny doughnuts are a highlight of the Stampede, but you can extend that carnival feel with Doughboy, a new doughnut hole counter inside of Doughlicious, the Mediterranean food shop tucked into the Greenview industrial area.

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Doughboy is the brainchild of Elshadai Getenet, operated in partnership with Doughlicious’s Samir and Mohamed Omar (who are also behind longstanding Calgary favourite Cedar’s Deli). Getenet, whose family is from Ethiopia, developed a passion for fried pastries through his early years spent in a Kenyan refugee camp, where his father would fry dough balls in a wok to sell on the side of the road to support his young family. Years later, after the family was settled in Calgary, Getenet set off to Australia to go to dental school and ended up running a coffee shop in Melbourne to finance his tuition. He sold doughnut balls similar to those his father made back in the refugee camp, with much success.

Now back in Calgary and also working as a dentist, Getenet opened Doughboy earlier this year. The concept is simple: he makes impossibly fluffy balls of fried dough and sells them in packs of 10 with a selection of sauces and toppings (anything from chocolate and crushed pistachio to Biscoff cookie sauce and Nutella) generously drizzled on top. Eating them while they’re fresh is essential (no one wants a cold ball of dough), but they’re so outrageously delicious that it shouldn’t be a problem to finish them off in good time.

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Doughboy is located at 4122 6th St. N.E. For more information, visit doughboyyyc.com.

Foothills Creamery beer-flavoured ice cream
This year, the Stampede Midway is terrorizing the general public with cheeseburger ice cream (yes, really), making Foothills Creamery’s new beer-flavoured ice cream seem quaint in comparison. Along with new summer flavours like root beer float and cinnamon bun, the Calgary-based dairy company collaborated with Village Brewery to create an ice cream flavour with the brewer’s Binge Watch New Zealand pale ale.

The subtle flavours of the pale ale work quite nicely with Foothills’s sweet and creamy base for a flavour that is almost as refreshing as drinking a pint of cold beer. The limited-edition Binge Watch beer flavour is only available in scoop shops and is currently being offered locally at the Calgary Farmers’ Market South, as well as a few select ice cream stores near Edmonton and in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. For a full list of participating retailers, visit https://www.foothillscreamery.com/binge-watch-beer-ice-cream.

Elizabeth Chorney-Booth can be reached at elizabooth@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram at @elizabooth or sign up for her newsletter at hungrycalgary.substack.com.

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