Stew

A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been cooked in liquid and served in the resultant gravy. Ingredients can include any combination of vegetables and may include meat, especially tougher meats suitable for slow-cooking, such as beef, pork, venison, rabbit, lamb, poultry, sausages, and seafood. While water can be used as the stew-cooking liquid, stock is also common. A small amount of red wine or other alcohol is sometimes added for flavour. Seasonings and flavourings may also be added. Stews are typically cooked at a relatively low temperature (simmered, not boiled), allowing flavours to mingle.

Cocido montañés or Highlander stew, a common Cantabrian dish
Stew
Lamb and lentil stew
TypeStew
Main ingredientsVegetables (carrots, celery, parsnips, potatoes, onions, beans, mushrooms, etc.), meat, (such as beef) and a liquid such as water, wine, beer or stock

Stewing is suitable for the least tender cuts of meat that become tender and juicy with the slow moist heat method. This makes it popular for low-cost cooking. Cuts with a certain amount of marbling and gelatinous connective tissue give moist, juicy stews, while lean meat may easily become dry.

Stews are thickened by reduction or with flour, either by coating pieces of meat with flour before searing, or by using a roux or beurre manié, a dough consisting of equal parts fat and flour. Thickeners like cornstarch, potato starch, or arrowroot may also be used.

History

Ohaw, Ainu fish and vegetables stew from northern Japan

Stews have been made since ancient times. The world's oldest known evidence of stew was found in Japan, dating to the Jōmon period.[1][2] Additionally, Herodotus says that the Scythians (8th to 4th centuries BC) "put the flesh into an animal's paunch, mix water with it, and boil it like that over the bone fire. The bones burn very well, and the paunch easily contains all the meat once it has been stripped off. In this way an ox, or any other sacrificial beast, is ingeniously made to boil itself."

Amazonian tribes used the shells of turtles as vessels, boiling the entrails of the turtle and various other ingredients in them.

There are recipes for lamb stews and fish stews in the Roman cookery book Apicius, believed to date from the 4th century AD. Le Viandier, one of the oldest cookbooks in French, written in the early 14th century by the French chef known as Taillevent, has ragouts or stews of various types in it.[3]

The first written reference to 'Irish stew' is in Byron's "The Devil's Drive" (1814): "The Devil ... dined on ... a rebel or so in an Irish stew."[4]

Types

Meat-based white stews also known as blanquettes or fricassées are made with lamb or veal that is blanched or lightly seared without browning, and cooked in stock. Brown stews are made with pieces of red meat that are first seared or browned, before a browned mirepoix and sometimes browned flour, stock and wine are added.

List of stews

A beef stew
Claypot beef stew with potatoes and mushrooms
Japanese cream stew
A traditional bouillabaisse from Marseille, with the fish served separately from the soup
Brongkos, Javanese stew
Cochinita pibil, cooling in the pan after cooking
Goulash in a traditional "bogrács"
Beef yahni
A pork stew (ragoût de porc)

See also

References

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