Brunswick Stew Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the ingredients to Brunswick stew? ›

Brunswick Stew Ingredients

Fresh vegetables: Onions, celery, and a green bell pepper lend fresh flavor. Canned vegetables: You'll also need three cans of whole peeled tomatoes and three cans of cream style corn. Meat: This meaty Brunswick stew recipe requires ground pork, ground beef, and cooked chicken.

Brunswick stew is a Southern dish that features beans, vegetables, and meat in a tomato base. Early Brunswick stews were often made with squirrel, rabbit, and even opossum. The thinking was to use whatever was local and easily available (much like today).

If your Brunswick Stew ends up being a little bit watery, then there is a solution to help thicken it up. Just as you can do with any soup, you can add a little flour and water, mix it up and then slowly add it to your stew. This should help thicken it up if you happen to add too much liquid.

It will keep for up to 3 or 4 days. Reheat before serving.

The difference between Brunswick stew and beef stew is very simple. Beef stew consists of beef, vegetables, tomato sauce, and some seasoning, while Brunswick stew has a very spicy flavour that comes from a combination of BBQ sauce and ketchup, and is made with beef, pork, and chicken.

Georgians find Virginia's stew mushy and thick; theirs is more liquid, with identifiable chunks of vegetables and meat. In Georgia, Brunswick stew almost always contains peas; in Virginia, almost never.

For safety reasons, the general guideline is that perishable foods, including cooked beef, should not be left out at room temperature for more than 2 hours. If the room temperature is above 90°F (32°C), this time is reduced to just 1 hour to prevent bacterial growth.

According to the anthropologist Charles Hudson, Southeastern Indians made a stew from hominy and groundhog or squirrel, and also boiled bear and deer meat with fresh corn kernels and squash. Brunswick stew belongs to a family of southern stews, its closest relative perhaps being Kentucky burgoo.

What state is known for Brunswick stew? ›

See, Brunswick, Georgia claims to be the birthplace of the very first Brunswick Stew. And Brunswick County, Virginia, makes the same claim. But if you look at the dates, Brunswick, Georgia made its first stew in 1898, and Brunswick County's stew was created in 1828, 70 years earlier.

The Broth – We usually use about 4 cups of broth and then top it off with just enough water to cover the meat and veggies. Our favorite ratio is 2 cups of beef stock and 2 cups of chicken stock – we find all beef stock to be a little intense and all chicken stock to be a little thin, so we split the difference.

If your dish is a little too sweet, try rounding out the sweetness by adding flavors or ingredients that are sour, bitter, or spicy. It may be obvious not to add more sweet ingredients, but you should also stay away from salty ones since they actually bring out the sweetness in food.

Add the wine and tomato paste to the onions and other aromatics in a pan before slow cooking. Plus, this helps to really deglaze any fond that's left. This ingredient is one that your mum and nan would probably use in their stews. It adds a bit of tang, sweetness and savoury spices that give an extra punch of flavour.

Add plain instant mashed potatoes (which are essentially just dehydrated potatoes) to the finished soup recipe as a thickening agent. Simple? Yes.

First cooked by James (Jimmy) Matthews as a squirrel stew, the recipe as we know it today was pretty much settled between 1816 and 1828 thanks to a fellow named Ned Stith. Both Matthews and Stith lived in Brunswick, VA. Georgia likes to claim the origination of Brunswick Stew, but their claim only goes back to 1898.

However, sometimes the ingredients will vary a little bit, and reflect the location of their origin. For example, traditional Kentucky burgoo recipes will contain mutton and lamb, whereas a Brunswick Stew would never contain either one of those.