Stews have been around almost nearly as long as humans have been cooking. All you need is a vessel to hold your ingredients and water and a means of heating that vessel. It can be as simple as a leather bag with stones heated in a fire dropped into it. So stews were almost certainly prepared during the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, if not earlier. Once you have clay or metal pots you can prepare stews next to or set directly over a fire. Stews are low-maintenance cookery, generally not requiring that the cooking pot be observed continuously. The slow cooking is also ideal for tenderizing tougher cuts of meat (neck, shin, tail etc). As these also tend to be the most flavoursome parts of animals, this also means that stews can be extremely flavourful. Stews also pair well with the local staple: potatoes, rice, bread, yams, cassava etc.

Even in hunter-gatherer societies stews are useful in that the slow cooking can make the most of tough meat and it can be combined with foraged grains, leafy greens, nuts and starchy tubers to yield a flavourful, low maintenance and nutritious meal. With the advent of agriculture almost all grains are amenable to stewing and combining grains and legumes in a stew provides a ready way to gain all the essential amino acids that humans (particularly children) require.

The boiling process of making stews also helps sterilize the ingredients, killing harmful bacteria and viruses. It can also help neutralize harmful chemicals, such as the cyanogenic compounds in bitter cassava and helps reduce bitterness in leafy greens, making the food both safer to eat and more palatable. The addition of flavouring ingredients (fruit, spices, herbs) during the cooking process can also alter the flavours of stews, making them more palatable and more appealing. This is particularly the case when adding components with high umami content (certain fish, seaweed, cruciferous vegetables, beans, soy sauce, mushrooms etc).

It is little wonder that, taken globally, the list of stews presented on this site is a long one.

Some stews border on soups and the definition of whether a dish is a soup or a stew. A good example of this is Welsh cawl which can be served with more liquid as a soup or can be thickened as a stew and served with bread and/or potatoes. Most curries, due to their long, slow cooking and blend of ingredients can also be considered a subtype of stew.

Pretty much every culture on earth has a classic stew that's a major part of its cultural culinary repertoire. I have viewed and collected recipes for many of these on my travels. These and other classic stews from around the world are collected and presented here.

The alphabetical list of all the stew recipes on this site follows, (limited to 100 recipes per page). There are 1816 recipes in total:

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Yellow Rice with Raisins      Origin: Southern Africa	Zürcher Eintopf (Zürich Style Hotpot)      Origin: Switzerland	Zereshk Polo ba Morgh (Saffron Chicken with Barberry Rice)      Origin: Iran
Yemiser W'et (Spicy Lentil Stew)      Origin: Ethiopia	Zürcher Geschnetzeltes (Cut Meat, Zürich Style)      Origin: Switzerland	Zigni (Eritrean Spiced Meat Stew)      Origin: Eritrea
Yetakelt W'et (Spiced Vegetable Stew)      Origin: Djibouti	Zamé      Origin: Mali	Zom (Bitter Greens with Meat)      Origin: Cameroon
Yétissé de Poisson (Fish Yetisse)      Origin: Mali	Zanzibar Pilau      Origin: Tanzania	Zuppa di Ciliege (Stewed Cherries)      Origin: San Marino
Ysgwydd Cig Oen Cymreig wedi ei bobi'n araf â chyri (Slow-cooked curried shoulder of Welsh Lamb)      Origin: Welsh	Zarzuela de Mariscos (Seafood Zarzuela)      Origin: Spain
Yuk Gae Jang (Spicy Beef and Vegetable Soup)      Origin: Korea	Zereshk Polo      Origin: Iran

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