Feels like home

Well...tastes is more like it really, and "home" is sort of questionable seeing as how I have moved every two years or so since I turned 15, so there is more than one place that I call "home". But in this case we are going with "home" as in Georgia - where most of my family and my husbands family is, and where we just came from. (Okay - "just" is also stretching it - but go with me here.)

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

Brunswick stew became a favorite of mine when we lived in south GA. There were some great BBQ places there that served up some amazing Brunswick stew. So, I was really excited when I read about this challenge a few weeks ago.

Ready to get things started

We were given two recipes to choose from, a long one and a short one. I picked the long one, and actually made it even longer by letting it cook in the crock-pot all day. There was a mishap along the way, but nothing too terrible. I was taking this photo of my progress and realized something...

I had added in the onion and carrot before I was supposed to. The stew turned out fine, the veggies were just a little softer than they would have been had I put them in at the end. When it came time to serve it up I had to get a picture of the "spoon sticking up" in the pot - SUCCESS I must have done it right!

I made a few changes - in addition to the crushed tomatoes, I added in some tomato paste because I like my stew with more tomato flavor. I also added in some smokey BBQ sauce because the stew I am used to is made with smoked BBQ and seeing as how I don't have a smoker, I figured this would be the next best option. It worked and tasted wonderful! I also only made 1/2 the recipe, and it was MORE than enough for my little family, in-fact we froze about 1/2 of it and are having it for dinner again tonight!

served up and ready to dig in

So if you're looking for a great stew recipe, I highly recommend this one! Thanks Wolf for a great challenge! You can find the recipe for both the long and short version HERE.