Brunswick Stew

Even though its origins are the subject of a heated debate, with Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia all claiming the dish to be their invention, everyone agrees that squirrel meat was the original ingredient of this Southern smoked meat stew.

Today, rabbit or chicken are used instead of squirrel, along with chunks of tomatoes, potatoes, beans, corn, okra, and salt pork or bacon. The stew has a distinctively smoky flavor due to smoking the meats before adding them to the pot, accompanied by a hefty dose of barbecue sauce.

Virginians originally called the dish Virginia ambrosia, invented in 1828 by Jimmy Matthews, an African American chef who was hired to cook for a squirrel-hunting party in Brunswick. The people of Georgia erected a huge iron pot monument in Brunswick near Savannah tha represents the original cooking vessel in which the first Brunswick stew was cooked in 1898.

North Carolina, along with having an important barbecue tradition, claims the dish is theirs solely on the basis of an eponymous town in the state. Whatever its origins may be, the stew is a popular dish throughout the South, be it at barbecue joints or 4th of July celebrations, its rich, flavorful juices traditionally scooped with cornbread, crunchy hushpuppies, or biscuits.