Would you (and should you) eat 40-day-old perpetual stew?

Brooklyn content creator goes viral after serving concoction that has been cooking for weeks

Perpetual stews trace their history back to medieval times. Photo: Edward Howell / Unsplash

It started as potato leek soup. Now, after 40 days of cooking and experimentation, it has become a “perpetual stew” that people are queuing up to sample in Brooklyn, New York.

Created by social media influencer Annie Rauwerda, who embarked on her stewing journey on June 7, the concoction has had multiple ingredient additions, refills and a handful of “stew parties”. It now tastes different every day.

Rauwerda took the idea from a Wikipedia page on perpetual stew – a pot into which "whatever foodstuffs one can find" are placed.

It adds: "The pot is never or rarely emptied all the way, and ingredients and liquid are replenished as necessary.”

Rauwerda also runs the Instagram page Depths of Wikipedia, where she highlights quirky finds.

The Brooklyn resident documents the stew's journey with daily vlogs. To keep the dish flowing, Rauwerda initially invited friends to add ingredients to it via “stew soirees”, where they put in more potatoes, celery, carrots, bean sprouts, rice, garlic and onions.

One day, dill was added in and “boy, was that a mistake”, Rauwerda posted. On June 15, she took the Crack-Pot concoction, as it's now dubbed, to the public, and started inviting strangers to drop by with anything they wanted to add to the stew.

Dozens of Brooklyn residents have since shown up bringing all types of vegetables, from mushrooms to sweet potatoes and beetroot. In return, they are handed bowls or cups of the mixture.

“It’s not just a perpetual stew now, it’s a viral perpetual stew,” Rauwerda told The Washington Post, as her soup gatherings have become something of a community event. One testimonial featured on her dedicated stew website reads: “Amazing stew, amazing friendships."

There are sceptics, of course, who deliberate on the safety and hygiene aspects of consuming the weeks-old broth.

Although the taste “completely depends on the day”, Rauwerda says, the stew “should be safe”.

“We keep it cooking at boiling temperature at all times and we also cycle [eat] the stew throughout the week, so ingredients aren't in there for too long," she says.

Rauwerda, who is not a trained chef, also points out the safe-to-eat Thai beef noodle broth that has been simmered for half a century in Bangkok's Wattana Panich restaurant. A perpetual stew is also similar to the Chinese master stock, a broth repeatedly used to prepare other dishes.

The content creator plans to end the stew-making on August 6, but says she can't predict what the soup is going to evolve into by then.