Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Chicken Stew History

If you are thinking about a warming, hearty dinner, chicken stew is one of those recipes that always spring to mind. You can make lots of different versions of chicken stew and this dish has a very interesting history spanning thousands of years.

A stew is a combination of two or more foods simmered in a liquid. Coq au vin, Hungarian goulash, beef bourguignon, and beef stroganoff are all examples of stews.

The "Apicius de re Coquinaria" is the oldest cookbook ever discovered. It contains fish and lamb stew recipes, although chicken had been domesticated by then too. There were three Romans with that name living between 1 BC and 2 AD and the book is believed to have been compiled by one of them.

It is possible to go back even further. Primitive tribes boiled foods together, which is what a stew is. Amazonian tribes used turtle shells to cook in and boiled the turtle entrails with other ingredients. Clam shells and similar were used by other cultures as cooking pots. This kind of cookery is proved to go back seven or eight thousand years with the archeological evidence we have access to. Pottery was invented about ten thousand years ago and this would have made cooking easier, especially dishes like stew.

Fowl such as chicken has been domesticated for thousands of years and chicken stew has been a longstanding popular dish. Different cultures have different chicken stews, such as the peanut butter chicken stew preferred in parts of Africa and the spicy chicken stew made in Morocco.

Different Kinds of Chicken Stew Recipes

Chicken booyah is a very flavorful chicken recipe. It is like a thick soup or a thin stew and is very popular in northeast Wisconsin. The first Belgian immigrants arrived in Wisconsin in 1853 and they spoke Walloon rather than English or French. It is thought that the word booyah derived from the word bouillon and a Belgian who did not know how to spell bouillon just wrote down how the word sounded to him.

Delicious Southern Chicken Stew

Perhaps you have tried southern chicken stew. It is a very popular recipe in North Carolina. Southern chicken stew is made with a whole chicken parboiled in a milk or cream based sauce. Butter, salt, pepper, and other ingredients are used in this recipe. The color of southern chicken stew varies from white to yellow, depending how much margarine or butter is used. It can be thin or thick in consistency and saltine crackers are often served with southern chicken stew.

Southern chicken stew is often served in the coolest months of the year and the phrase "chicken stew" can refer to the gathering itself rather than the food. A chicken stew recipe is usually thought of as a comfort food because these recipes are cheap to make, enjoyed by nearly everybody and they are warming and flavorful. This is a common dish served at social gatherings such as church fellowships, family reunions, and community fundraisers.

At such events, the chicken stew will be prepared in a large cast iron or stainless steel cooking pot and might be made outside over an open fire. You might get grilled cheese sandwiches, rice, or coleslaw served on the side.

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Chicken soup recipes are a wonderful way to give your family a wonderfully warm and filling meal for lunch without a lot of fuse. Learn how do you make chicken corn soup.