Mason-Dixon Recipes

Southern Piedmont Brunswick Stew

A genuine South-side dish, composed of squirrels, chicken, a little bacon, and corn and tomatoes.

         — The Alexandria Gazette (1849)

Brunswick stew is a Southern dish that features a tomato base with beans, vegetables, and meat. Early Brunswick stews were often made with squirrel, rabbit, even opossum, but these days pork, chicken, and beef are common. The original thinking was to use local ingredients and those you have on hand, which remains the same today.

Chicken and rabbit are more common in Virginia, pork in Georgia, and in recent years, Eastern North Carolina–style pulled pork barbecue may be found in their Brunswick Stew. Many Piedmont barbecue restaurants include Lexington-style barbecue in the dish. Eastern North Carolina Brunswick Stew contains potatoes, which thicken it considerably. Eastern Virginia Brunswick Stew tends to be thinner, with more tomato flavor.

The exact origin of the stew is disputed. Brunswick County, Virginia, and the city of Brunswick, Georgia, claim to have created it. A plaque on an old iron pot in Brunswick, Georgia, says the first Brunswick stew was made in it on July 2, 1898, on nearby St. Simons Island. A competing story claims a Virginia state legislator's chef invented the recipe in 1828 on a hunting expedition.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, in her Cross Creek Cookery (1942), wrote that the stew, said to have been one of Queen Victoria's favorites, may have come from Braunschweig (known as "Brunswick" in British English) in northern Germany, one of the historic capitals of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

INGREDIENTS

1 lb bone-in chicken breasts, boiled and diced
4 cups chicken stock (32-oz carton) or 4 cups reserved water
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
1 8-oz can diced tomatoes
2 8-oz cans of new potatoes, drained and diced
1 8-oz can of whole kernel corn, drained (or frozen equivalent)
1 8-oz can baby lima beans/pinto beans (or frozen equivalent)
1 8-oz can English peas (or frozen equivalent)
¹/₄ cup carrots, diced
¹/₄ cup onion, diced
¹/₄ cup green bell pepper, diced
1 stalk celery, sliced
3 tbsp olive oil
¹/₈ cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp salt
¹/₂ tsp paprika
¹/₂ tsp parsley
¹/₂ tsp ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

Cut chicken into large pieces and then boil for 45 minutes until cooked through. Remove and reserve water. Let cool and then either shred or cut into bit-size pieces.

In a medium saucepan and under medium heat, sauté onions, peppers, and celery in olive oil. When onions translucent, drain and add to chicken and other ingredients in a large pot, adding 4 cups of chicken stock or 4 cups of reserved water if using water instead of chicken broth (after straining to remove fat). You can also use 2 and 2 cups of both.

Bring to a boil and then simmer until vegetables are soft.

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