In a Stew

     Winter is a great time to make stew.  First it warms the kitchen with a delightful aroma and then it warms the body as the family gathers around the table at mealtime.  Beef stew is perhaps the most familiar winter classic.  But there are many others that vary by both ingredients and geography.  Cook's Country magazine in its December/January issue describes five regional favorites:

Mulligan:  The catchall term for catchall stews.  "Mulligan" has imprecise origins.  Mulligan stew's similarity to Irish stew (mutton, potatoes, and vegetables) suggests a connection to Ireland, where "Mulligan," according to linguist Henry Hitchings, is used as a generic (and often negative) term for Irishmen.

Brunswick:  Towns in Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina all lay claim to this stew.  But food historian John Egerton has dismissed them all.  "there was Brunswick stew before there was a Brunswick."  Native Americans have been stewing squirrel, rabbit with other ingredients for centuries.

Burgoo:  A Works Progress Administration study set this Kentucky's stew's origins in the 19th Century, hailing a crafty Confederate army cook who put "potatoes, tomatoes, onions, some cabbage, twenty-nine blackbirds, three crows, a goose, several hens, and a shoat (a young pig)" in a powder kettle and set it to simmer.

Booya:  Walloon speaking Belgian immigrants settled the area around Green Bay, Wisconsin in the 1850s where they started serving this stew of oxtails, beef, chicken, cabbage, beans, kohlrabi and rutabaga.

Slumgullion:  Miners in the Rockies called their stew slumgullion, a word also used to describe the muddy slough left behind after gold panning.  In Colorado's San Juan Mountains a slow-moving landslide so reminded miners of the stew that they dubbed it Slumgullion Slide.