Booyah (also spelled booya, bouja, boulyaw, or bouyou) is a thick stew, believed to have originated in

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

, and made throughout the

Upper Midwest The Upper Midwest is a region in the northern portion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwestern United States. It is largely a sub-region of the Midwest. Although the exact boundaries are not uniformly agreed-upon, the region is defined as referring ...

ern

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Booyah can require up to two days and multiple cooks to prepare; it is cooked in specially designed "booyah kettles" and usually meant to serve hundreds or even thousands of people. The name can also refer to a social event surrounding the meal.

Description

In cooking booyah, one makes a base or

broth Broth, also known as bouillon (), is a savory liquid made of water in which meat, fish or vegetables have been simmered for a short period of time. It can be eaten alone, but it is most commonly used to prepare other dishes, such as soups, ...

derived from meat bones, to which vegetables are added.

Beef Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle (''Bos taurus''). In prehistoric times, humankind hunted aurochs and later domesticated them. Since that time, numerous breeds of cattle have been bred specifically for the quality or quantit ...

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...

, and

pork Pork is the culinary name for the meat of the domestic pig (''Sus domesticus''). It is the most commonly consumed meat worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BCE. Pork is eaten both freshly cooked and preserved; ...

are popular varieties of meat for booyah (with all three often in the same kettle), with vegetables such as carrots,

peas The pea is most commonly the small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the flowering plant species ''Pisum sativum''. Each pod contains several peas, which can be green or yellow. Botanically, pea pods are fruit, since they contain seeds and d ...

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onio ...

, and

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es also in the mix. A wide variety of seasonings are used, sometimes lowered into the kettle in a

cheesecloth Cheesecloth is a loose-woven gauze-like carded cotton cloth used primarily in cheesemaking and cooking. Grades Cheesecloth is available in at least seven different grades, from open to extra-fine weave. Grades are distinguished by the nu ...

bag. Typical large-scale booyah kettles can hold more than and are made from steel or cast iron to withstand direct heat and the long cooking time.

Etymology

The term "booyah" may be a variant of "bouillon". It is thought to have derived from the

Walloon language Walloon (; natively ; french: wallon) is a Romance language that is spoken in much of Wallonia and (to a very small extent) in Brussels, Belgium; some villages near Givet, northern France; and a clutch of communities in northeastern Wisconsin, ...

words for "boil" ('' bouillir'') and "broth" (

bouillon Bouillon can refer to: Food * Bouillon (broth), a simple broth ** Court-bouillon, a quick broth * Bouillon (soup), a Haitian soup * Bouillon (restaurant), a traditional type of French restaurant **Bouillon Chartier, a bouillon restaurant foun ...

). The spelling with an H has been attributed to

phonetic spelling A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the phonemes (significant spoken sounds) of the language. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographi ...

by Wallonian immigrants from Belgium. The '' Dictionary of American Regional English'' attributes the term to French Canadian immigrants; others attribute it to a derivation from the Provençal seafood dish ''

bouillabaisse Bouillabaisse (; oc, bolhabaissa, bullabessa ) is a traditional Provençal fish stew originating in the port city of Marseille. The French and English form ''bouillabaisse'' comes from the Provençal Occitan word ''bolhabaissa'', a compound ...

''. An article in the Green Bay ''Press-Gazette'' on October 29, 1976, speculating on the origin of the spelling and related fundraiser event, reads: A November 19, 2015, ''Press-Gazette'' article repeats Rentmeester's claim but also suggests that the dish "could have erupted as a tradition in multiple places at once". The article notes that there are several variations on the name "booyah" around the

that "appear to be attempts to phonetically manage the hard-to-spell word 'bouillon', and they all are pronounced roughly the same".

Modern day

Booyah is still made in northern and northeastern

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

, and

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

's Upper Peninsula at county fairs,

VFW The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), formally the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, is an organization of US war veterans, who, as military service members fought in wars, campaigns, and expeditions on foreign land, waters, or ...

gatherings, at booyah cooking contests, and in smaller amounts at private gatherings. In a 2018 article in the ''

Post Crescent ''The Post-Crescent'' is a daily newspaper based in Appleton, Wisconsin. Part of the Gannett chain of newspapers, it is primarily distributed in numerous counties surrounding the Appleton/Fox Cities area. History ''The Appleton Crescent'' was ...

'', Booyah was reportedly sold at church and other non-profit fundraisers for $20 (U.S. dollar) per gallon (4 liters). The Green Bay Booyah baseball team was named after the stew. In the Netflix series ''Greenleaf'', season 2 episode 3, Kevin's mother Ethlin Satterlee (Denise Burse) is finally invited to meet the newborn Nathan, son of Charity. She then makes herself a booyah, as it is tradition in her family, but with the Greenleaf issues exposed just before, nobody tastes the stew.

References

External links

Authentic Chicken Booyah recipe from Mona Faye's Kitchen

What is Booya?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Booyah (Stew) American stews Cuisine of the Midwestern United States Cuisine of Wisconsin Cuisine of Minnesota French-Canadian culture in the United States Culture of Saint Paul, Minnesota Culture of Green Bay, Wisconsin American meat dishes

Description

Etymology

Modern day

See also

References

External links