Perpetual Stew | Hacker News Reader

Perpetual Stew

en.wikipedia.org

I did an experiment with this and a crockpot years ago. I'm no hunter or fisher but I would drop by a store and pick up some sausages, chicken, or beef and a handful of veggies along with some kind of stock/broth, usually chicken, to keep the liquid up.

The experiment lasted for two weeks and, while there was a ton of flavor, I kept occasionally running into a piece of meat or a veggie that had clearly been sitting in there way too long and it was a huge turn off. Especially the meat. The veggies, if was a potato or a carrot wasn't too bad.

I think if you are continuously going through nearly the whole pot and have a family to feed this could be a great continuous lunch. For someone living on their own and just having it for dinner it got weird.

A key point seems to be straining the stew frequently. The stock persists, the solids don't.

https://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/2015/1/28/why-you-shouldnt... (via Wikipedia's references)

thanks for this link!

Has anyone tried a bowl of something like this? I'm sure the flavor varies significantly from location to location, but I'm curious regardless. I wonder if it's a method of cooking we abandoned due to taste or due to more efficent cooking methods being developed.

I have- just put the slowcooker on low and started putting my scraps in there. It was a total disaster after i added some Parmesan Everybody in the house was completely unable to handle the smell. I still think it has potential as an idea, but like all cooking, the details really matter, which is sort of exactly opposite to the appeal of the idea of a perpetual stew. Anyway, i'd try it again, but will wait until the of the house is going to be empty for a while.

Japan has restaurants that do this for their sauces and they'll proudly tell you that their sauce is 80 years old. Generally, it's hard to find anything continuously going from before WWII.

They are called Hiden-no-tare (秘伝のタレ). The word is also used for undocumented steps of works like a server setup.

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