1905 Alabama diner ad featuring camp stew

Across the Yellowhammer State, cooks of every description have been lighting fires under old kettles and cooking camp stew for well over a hundred years. From the Tennessee Valley in the northern part of the state to the Mobile-Tensaw Delta on the Gulf Coast, camp stew is available nightly in hundreds of households, barbecue shacks, meat and three joints, and of course, hunting camps. The fortunate among us may find the dish in the backwood taverns that dot the rural countryscape across the region. Camp stew is so ingrained in the psychology of Alabama eaters that it made the 100 Dishes To Eat In Alabama Before You Die list published by the Birmingham News, a journal with roots that stretch back to the 19th century.

1912 barbecue stand as for camp stew

What It Is & Where to Find It
Snack bars at fiddler conventions, pro-wrestling matches, National Guard Armories, high school football games, beauty pageants, and Baptist homecomings held across the entirety of the state reliably have big pots of camp stew burbling on the range. If you’re not from Alabama you may ask yourself, what is this dish? It’s the stuff of fever dreams: a potent witch’s brew of all manners of meats, vegetables, and starches including but not limited to common ingredients such as pork, beef, and chicken serving as proteins with tomatoes, onion, and corn filling the role of vegetables. Worcestershire sauce is a crucial component. Wild game like alligator, squirrel, quail, and feral hog may also be found in an adventurous cook’s stew.

A 1913 Alabama newspaper article mentions that Democrats and suffragettes alike enjoy camp stew

Beans: A Must-Have Ingredient
Butter beans, Limas, or Baby Limas are often included, and you may even find Great Northern beans or Pintos depending on what part of the state you’re exploring. “If it ain’t got beans in it, it ain’t camp stew,” is a common refrain heard when discussing the dish. Piscine versions of camp stew may be found as you explore diners and cafés alongside rivers like the Choctawhatchee, Black Warrior, and Escatawpa.

A 1908 recounting of a camp stew feast served to Alabama prisoners

Feeding the Masses in Good Times and Bad
In the early 20th century the penal colonies of the day were not immune to the charms of camp stew. The Montgomery city jail cooked a few large vats of the stuff to feed their prisoners at Thanksgiving time. Montgomery would prove itself to be a critical nexus in the furtherance of the popularity of camp stew as the 20th century gathered steam. Saloon keepers in the heart of the city began using the dish as a powerful magnet to get the drinking men to frequent their establishments. With purchase of a cocktail or cold draft beer, these enterprising business owners would set out a bowl of the stuff with nary a charge. When the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 struck, the good citizens of Alabama swung into motion and launched a camp stew-based charitable festival and sold a thousand tickets to a massive stew party held at the legendary Pickett Springs Resort near Montgomery. All the moneys were remitted to the citizens of San Francisco to assuage their suffering.

A 1931 advertisement seeking the services of a camp stew and barbecue man

A Badge of Honor
No less a luminary than legendary woodsman, author and naturalist Horace Kephart would soon integrate the cooking of camp stew into the regimen of becoming an official Boy Scout. In that halcyon era, a young scout had to demonstrate proficiency in the preparation of camp stew to earn his cooking merit badge. Want to become an Eagle Scout? Fire up that pot of camp stew, and it better taste good. By the time the 1930s came along, a regional derivation of camp stew called Lumberjack-style was being practiced in Jefferson County in the central portion of the state, but the details of what was surely pure deliciousness have been lost to the sands of time.

In 1949 the first canned camp stew made its way to market

A Canned Version, Extra Heavy on the Meat
At mid-century, a canned version of camp stew was being offered in Birmingham grocery stores but the enterprise was not fully formed enough to attach a name brand to the product. That would change as the Reynolds-Holston Canning Company of Troy, Alabama, soon waded into the fray with their own canned version of the food stuff. No strangers to marketing, the ads of the day trumpeted their product as being “extra heavy on meat”, and “100-year-old formula” was often prominently mentioned as well.

1960 ad for an Alabama barbecue stand featuring camp stew

Fundraising for Civil Rights & Putting Restaurants on the Map
As the Civil Rights-era dawned, camp stew played a prominent role in fundraising activities. Black women fanned out across Montgomery County, Alabama, selling fried catfish sandwiches, chicken and dumpling plates, and yes, camp stew. The money was plowed straight back into the movement, and these humble foods helped foment real change across the region. One now-successful restaurateur threw what she called “Heaven and Hell suppers” as she was trying to raise money to get her business going. A fiery camp stew would be served followed by ice cream and pound cake. Martha’s Place is now in its fourth decade and feeds upwards of 500 people daily. Camp Stew helped Martha Hawkins make her dream a reality. Camp stew is writ into the genetic code of Alabamians. The elixir has a thousand mothers and a thousand fathers, each claiming primacy. Truth be told, there is no “one true camp stew”. It’s the one that is currently in front of you that will most likely serve as the best one you ever ate. That is until you visit Aunt Hazel and Uncle Ralph’s cabin near Wetumpka this weekend, when a new ranking will be loudly and enthusiastically affirmed.

A young camp stew cook tending to his kettle in the early 1980s

This post hails from R.L. Reeves, Jr., a Texas photographer and writer who is living and documenting life in the 9th Ward of New Orleans. His recipes and cooking notes can be found on his food and culture blog, scrumptiouschef.com

Etta Sullivan, Lily Taylor, and my grandma Nellie Sullivan. Photo courtesy of R.L. Reeves, Jr.

This post hails from R.L. Reeves, Jr., a Texas photographer and writer who is living and documenting life in the 9th Ward of New Orleans. His recipes and cooking notes can be found on his food and culture blog, scrumptiouschef.com

“Boy you’re not gonna amount to a hill of beans.”

That was my grandma Nellie Sullivan’s standard exclamation anytime I did something that got her ire up.

That was about as strong a ‘talking to’ as I ever received, but in the Cumberland Highlands of Eastern Kentucky that was plenty stout enough.

In the early part of the 20th century a hill of pinto beans had such little worth the good mountain people of the region quit growing them.

It was cheaper and less taxing on the granny women who tended the gardens to just saddle up one of the family’s mules and ride down to Bargo’s General Store and buy a big sack for a few pennies.

That’s how the invective “…hill of beans” came to be.

I’ve lived all over the southern region of the United States and have never found bean-loving cultures as strong as the ones in Eastern Kentucky and Louisiana, specifically New Orleans.

Let’s discuss:

Ham hock vs Creole or hot sausage.

The standard protein for a bowl of Appalachian pinto beans is a giant ham hock with plenty meat attached. You lower it into the broth along with the dry beans and magic occurs over the next two hours as the beans turn tender and the silky ham meat falls off the bone.

Here in New Orleans we do the same thing but with the addition of Creole or ‘hot’ sausage serving as a meaty garnish that straddles a bowl of Camellia kidney beans.

There is a deep love in this part of Louisiana for ‘pickle meat,’ a hold-over from the pre-refrigeration era in Louisiana. If your family had a surfeit of fresh hog meat they had to figure out a way to preserve it to last them through the winter. Pickling that fresh meat ensured that they would have plenty protein to last them throughout the year without the luxury of a big Frigidaire in their kitchen.

That pickled pork meat was and is a standard part of the red beans kettle.

When I was a little kid, hog killing time was marked by the first frost. That’s when the pigs kept in my grandpa Big Jim Sullivan’s pen knew the end of their days had come. Pickling was my grandma’s forte and was reserved for vegetables. Big Jim had a smokehouse in the backyard with 50-pound bags of saltpetre at the ready. The fresh meat was covered with a blend of that sodium nitrate along with regular salt and that combination cured and preserved the meat to great effect.

Hickory smoked, cured ham hocks were part and parcel of every pot of pinto soup beans that my grandma ever made.

Corn bread vs French bread.

I still remember the look of disdain I received from a New Orleans waitress when I asked after cornbread on a vacation here back in the 80s. “We don’t serve that dawlin” she flatly stated. My mind raced. How was I supposed to soak up the likker in the bottom of my bowl? A foot-long loaf of French bread quickly arrived to table, and it was fine but not in the same league as a pone of hot cornbread garnished with a hunk of cow’s butter. If you opened a diner in Eastern Kentucky and did not serve cornbread you’d go belly up within a month. If you tried the same thing in New Orleans sans French bread you’d shutter just as quick.

Any day of the week vs Monday.

Across the Appalachian mountains of Eastern Kentucky folks hit the kitchen on a nightly basis to cook up a kettle of pinto beans. There is not a traditional “bean day.” Here in New Orleans we do things a little different. Monday is the day that cooks across the city fire up the bean pot to feed family and friends. Restaurants here further the tradition by putting sandwich boards on the sidewalk in front of their establishment with quaint artwork trumpeting the kitchen’s bean output for the day.

Fried potatoes vs rice.

Every pinto bean cook in Kentucky has their own particular way they fry their potatoes as a standard side for their beans. My daddy would cut Irish potatoes into crude batons and slowly cook them in rendered hog lard with plenty yellow onion til the potatoes were crisp and the onions were tawny brown and fully caramelized. You’d then take the potatoes and put them in the bowl with the beans and make a heavenly mash.

In New Orleans we simply boil up a pot of good rice, put the rice into the bottom of the bowl and pour the beans over the top. If you’re really feeling enterprising you may also toss a cube of bouillon in the rice kettle.

Piccalilli vs hot sauce.

That rich pot of beans you’ve been simmering on your stovetop all day needs an acidic counterpoint to give it a little jolt. In Kentucky that call is answered by piccalilli, a lightly-fermented jar-bound melange of vegetables that have been treated with vinegar and allowed to mature in a dark cupboard. In New Orleans we crack open a bottle of Crystal or Tabasco hot sauce and douse the beans with the liquid fire.

Chile spice is foreign to the Kentucky tongue, where people will talk of how a bell pepper “lit them up.” Down here on the bayous we love our hot peppers, and are always figuring out ways to get a little extra heat in our dishes.

I’m left to wonder who has the stronger bean culture, Kentucky or Louisiana?

Neither. This is not a zero sum game. Each place has a clutch of dedicated eaters and cooks who pour their heart into their bean kettles. I’ve been fortunate to call both states home and you won’t find a place on earth with more welcoming people – and you can’t beat the cooks or the food cultures of either.