Brunswick Stew

As tradition built it

Brunswick Stew

Serves 6. About 1 hour 30 minutes.

Ingredients

• 6 tbsp butter
• 1½ cups onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1½ cups lima beans
• 2 cups corn kernels
• 950ml chicken stock
• 2 x 400g cans tomatoes, diced
• 1½ cups barbecue sauce
• 3 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• scant ½ cup brown sugar
• to taste seasoning salt, black pepper, hot sauce, cayenne, to taste
• ½ cup parsley, chopped
• 2 cups cooked, pulled meat (squirrel, or chicken and pork)

Method

1. Sweat the onion and garlic in the butter for about 5 minutes.
2. Add the lima beans, corn, tomatoes and stock, and bring to a boil.
3. Once the vegetables soften, stir in the barbecue sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, seasoning salt, black pepper, hot sauce, cayenne and the pulled meat.
4. Cover and simmer on low to medium heat for at least an hour, stirring occasionally, until thick and well combined, then finish with the chopped parsley.

Notes

Both Brunswick County, Virginia, whose own 1988 state proclamation credits an enslaved cook, Jimmy Matthews, with creating the dish for his enslaver in 1828, and Brunswick, Georgia, which displays a pot said to have cooked the first stew there in 1898, claim the name; the Georgia claim's own state encyclopedia is candid that the documentary evidence is thin. This chapter states both claims and adjudicates neither.

What a modern chef changes

A long-simmered stew's flavour built in layers rather than in one pot.

Rung uncited, a reduction and layering logic shared with Rung 1.

Method

1. Cook the meat sous vide separately, chicken at 65°C for 2 hours, pork shoulder at 75°C for 8 hours, so each protein reaches perfect texture on its own terms before joining the vegetable base, rather than one over-cooking while the other catches up in a single pot.
2. Reduce the tomato and stock base by a third before combining, concentrating the stew's savoury depth so the final simmer with the meat only needs to marry flavours, not build them from raw ingredients.