The beauty of this stew is that you keep adding to it with new ingredients and keep it simmering away.
JUST the name has me curious: Perpetual stew. Is it really – as the dictionary describes – never ending or everlasting stew?
The answer is yes.
According to Wikipedia, perpetual stew also known as forever soup, hunter’s pot or hunter’s stew, is a pot into which whatever foodstuffs one can find is placed and cooked, and the pot is never or rarely emptied all the way, and ingredients and liquid are replenished as necessary.
The beauty of this stew is that you keep adding to it with new ingredients, and keep it simmering away. It definitely takes care of the problem of food waste.
All your odds and ends can go in the soup.
With TikTok followers always getting on board with just about any trend, the latest unlikely fad to take over the video-sharing app is the ‘perpetual stew’.
Creator Annie Rauwerda (@depthsofwikipedia) is leading the charge and at the time of writing, has been slow-cooking her perpetual stew since June 11 this year as a sort of social enterprise, inviting friends, new and old, to contribute to the pot.
Most are bringing staples like stock, garlic, potatoes, celery and onions, and one chaotic-neutral even brought a fennel.
But at just over thirty days old, Rauwerda’s soup is practically in its infancy. Especially when compared to the perpetual stews of history.
@depthsofwikipedia more medieval behavior!
According to research the dish has been around since at least the Medieval times in Europe and is basically the original bottom-of-the-fridge stock.
Kept in a large bowl-shaped pot just above the ‘danger zone’ of sixty degrees Celsius, the stock would be made of ale, bread, beans, salted pork, cabbage and whatever else might be at hand, constantly evolving depending on what had been thrown into the pot each day. It would then be served up as a cheap meal for weary travellers.
Is it safe to eat?
Food poisoning is, of course, the question on everyone’s minds. Can something cook continuously for that long and not make anyone sick?
According to ‘How Stuff Works’, as long as it is maintained at 93 degrees Celsius, which is the temperature required for a steady simmer, nothing bad can grow.
