Virginia · Soup
Brunswick Stew
- Intermediate
- 3 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, acid holding everything up to the light, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, about 1.6kg
- 500g pork shoulder, cubed
- 3L water
- 2 onions, diced
- 800g crushed tomatoes
- 500g potatoes, cubed
- 300g lima beans
- 300g corn kernels
- 3 tbsp Worcestershire
- 2 tbsp cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- Hot sauce, salt, and pepper
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the chicken and pork in the water 90 min until both fall apart. Lift out, shred the meat, and keep the broth. 90 min
- Return the broth to the pot with the onion, tomatoes, and potatoes and simmer 30 min until the potatoes begin to break down. 30 min
- Add the limas and cook 15 min, then the corn and the shredded meat. 15 min
- Season with Worcestershire, vinegar, sugar, hot sauce, salt, and pepper.
- Simmer uncovered another 30-45 min, stirring often, until the stew is thick enough for a spoon to stand in it. 45 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes
- It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
- It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
- It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
- It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
- Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.
Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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