Brunswick Stew

Veteran's day means Brunswick Stew at church.  We use the proceeds to fund various ministries around the community.  This year marked the 51st year.

We use 6 pots ranging from 30 to 65 gallons. Each pot has about 25 gallons of vegetables and broth that must be cooked down before adding the chicken.  The big pots get double that.

 

 

This is pot 1 aka Big Pot. It's 65 Gallons and is a converted church bell.

 

Pot 2 is only 30 gallons.

 

Pot 3 is the only modern pot.  I purchased it several years ago. It's 65 gallons.

 

 Pot 4 is 39 gallons

Pot 5 is also 39 gallons.

Pot 6, aka little big pot is also a converted church bell. It's 45 gallons

 

 We cook the chicken ahead of time.  Previous years this was whole chickens and would be an all day job.  After covid I was not able to find whole chickens by the case and switched to thighs. This makes the process go much quicker and I think gives the stew a better flavor.  We save the broth and added while cooking.

 

 Stew night, cooking starts around 9:00. There's a couple hours of cleaning and leveling the pots that mush happen beforehand. Potatoes go in first, followed by the onions.  No stirring at this point. That prevents the onions from sticking and burning.

 

 After around 90 minutes we add the canned vegetables, stacking the cans in front of the pot so we can keep track of the quantity. 

 

It's basically soup at this point.

 

 I hold off adding the chicken until around 4am. Once the chicken is added you must start stirring and there’s only 3 of us on the overnight crew. The morning "stir" crew doesn't arrive until 5:30. You can see how full the smallest pot is at this point so we need to cook it down to add the chicken.

 

It's done when you can stand the paddle upright. 

 

We usually get around 140-145 gallons.  Originally, this was bottled in 1 gallon glass pickle jars.  This was very labor intensive as all the jars were washed and sterilized by hand. Dropping a full jar was catastrophic.

 

 

 We power-wash the pots which are then placed back on the burners to dry.  We then apply a thick coating of lard while the pots are still hot.