When does a soup become a stew?

Answer 1

Soup is basically any combination of vegetables, fruit, meat, and/or fish cooked in a liquid.Wheras, stew is dish containing meat, vegetables and a thick soup-like broth made from a combination of the stewing liquid and the natural juices of the food being stewed.

Answer 2

What’s the difference between soup and stew? In short, stews have a trifle less water and a bit more attitude.

While even a clear broth can pass muster as soup, stews rely more on complexity—not in their preparation, but in the synergy between their seasonings and ingredients. Like the best soups, stews thrive on a good melding of ingredients, especially in offbeat combinations. And because stews rely less on broth and more on ingredients for character, making vegetarian stews that dazzle the taste buds is actually less challenging to accomplish than with meatless soups.

Answer 3

What’s the difference between soup and stew? In short, stews have a trifle less water and a bit more attitude. In other words, it's the cooks choice.

Personally, if the liquid is flavored water and , generally opaque, it's a soup. If is like a gravy, it is a stew. But, that's my opinion.

Answer 4

well as far as i know stew consist of some kind of thicking agent like flour or starch. Were as soups consist of things like jucies and broths and water and have no thicking agents. Because you can make a soup in to a stew some time by simply adding a thicking agent to it were as you can't really turn a stew in to a soup.

Answer 5

a soup is something that can be made very quickly or under 30 min. and a stew is something that you cook over a period of time like in a slow cooker

Answer 6

a soup has more water in it, a stew is thicker and very rich in flavors

Answer 7

after it is cooked for a longer piriod of time and the matirials in it meld together, not mix, they settle into other surounding objects in the stew and there the becomes a unique flavor, hope its good. bonapitite!!!

Answer 8

:: Soup ::

Soup is a savoury liquid food that is made by combining ingredients, such as meat, vegetables and beans in stock or hot water, until the flavor is extracted, forming a broth. Boiling was not a common cooking technique until the invention of waterproof containers (which probably came in the form of pouches made of clay or animal skin) about 5,000 years ago (possibly longer), so soups presumably were little-known before that time.

Over the centuries, the terms gruel and potage have become separated from broth and stock (and their refinement, consommé). The language may have shifted over time, but the modern definitions of soup and stew were established in the 18th century: soups usually are more liquid; stews are thicker, containing more solid ingredients. Stews are cooked in covered containers for longer periods of time, at a gentle boil with less water and at a lower heat.

Traditionally, soups are classified into two broad groups: clear soups and thick soups. The established French classifications of clear soups are bouillon and consommé. Thick soups are classified depending upon the type of thickening agent used: purées are vegetable soups thickened with starch; bisques are made from puréed shellfish thickened with cream; cream soups are thickened with béchamel sauce; and veloutés are thickened with eggs, butter and cream. Other ingredients commonly used to thicken soups and broths include rice, flour, and grain.

:: Stew ::

A stew is a common dish made of vegetables, meat, poultry, or seafood cooked in some sort of broth or sauce. The line between stew and soup is a fine one, but generally a stew's ingredients are cut in larger pieces and retain some of their individual flavours, a stew may have thicker broth, and a stew is more likely to be eaten as a main course than as a starter. There are exceptions; for example, an oyster stew is more like a soup.

Stewing has a long tradition in cookery. Popular recipes for regional stews, such as gumbo, bouillabaise, Brunswick stew, and burgoo became common during the 19th century and have increased in popularity during the 20th century.

Written records of stews go back as far as written cookbooks. There are recipes for lamb stews & fish stews in Apicius de re Coquinaria, whose identity is uncertain, there having been three Romans by that name in the period 1st century BC to 2nd century AD. What is known is that the book has survived, and there are recipes for stews of lamb and fish in it. (An English translation is available 'Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome', A Bibliography, Critical Review and Translation of the Ancient Book known as Apicius de re Coquinaria by Joseph Dommers Vehling, which is available in reprint paperback from Dover Publications.)

Taillevent (French chef, 1310-1395 whose real name was Guillaume Tirel) wrote Le Viandier, one of the oldest cookbooks in French, also has ragouts or stews of various types in it.

To go back even further, there is ample evidence from primitive tribes who survived into the 19th and 20th centuries, that they could and did boil foods together (which is what a stew essentially is). Amazonian tribes used the shells of turtles, boiling the entrails of the turtle and various other ingredients. Other cultures used the shells of large mollusks (clams etc.) to boil foods. There is archaeological evidence of these practices going back 7,000 or 8,000 years or more.

Herodotus tells us of the Scythians (8th to 4th centuries BC), who "put the flesh into an animal's paunch, mix water with it, and boil it like that over the bone fire. The bones burn very well, and the paunch easily contains all the meat once it has been striped off. In this way an ox, or any other sacrificial beast, is ingeniously made to boil itself." (Some sources feel this was how some of the first 'boiling' was done by primitive man, perhaps as long ago as ½ to 1 million years ago!)

The development of pottery, perhaps 10,000 years ago, made cooking, and stews in particular, even easier.

Examples of stews include Hungarian Goulash, Carbonnades a la Flamande, and Boeuf Bourguignon.

Hungarian Goulash dates back to the 9th century Magyar shepherds of the area, before the existence of Hungary. Paprika was added in the 18th century.

The first written reference to 'Irish stew' is in Byron's 'Devil's Drive' (1814): "The Devil . . . dined on . . . a rebel or so in an Irish stew.”

Answer 9

A stew will have much more substance( meat, potatoes) and is thicker.

Answer 10

When you slowly cook off enough liquid to thicken it to the consistency of a rue.