brown stew

noun

A stew in which the meat is browned before being added

Opposite
white stew

Meanings

nounbrown stew (countable and uncountable, plural brown stews)

plural brown stews

  1. countabledateduncountablecookingA stew in which the meat is browned before being added

    Brown stew and Irish stew were among the dishes that appeared each week on the nursery menu.

    2014, Sam Miller, A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes, Random House, →ISBN, page 33
    4 more examples

    For a brown stew, the meat and sometimes the vegetables are browned in hot fat before being simmered

    1916, Mary Emma Williams, Katharine Rolston Fisher, Elements of the theory and practice of cookery; a textbook of domestic science for use in schools, New York & London: Macmillan, page 172

    For the duffs are now brown, and the stew is brown stew, They're all fancy names for the scoff.

    1940s, "Me Boys, Have You Any Complaints?"; printed in Jerry Silverman Songs of the British Isles (2012: Mel Bay Publications). →ISBN p. 44

    The menu in respect of each day of the week ended 11th September, 1959, for a Dublin Barracks was as follows:— ... [Date] 9-9-59 ... [Dinner] Brown Stew [etc.]

    1959 October 21, Kevin Boland, "Written Answers. - Army Scale of Rations." Dáil Éireann debates Vol. 177 No.1 p.69 cc.54–56

    There’s everything from Eva Holmes’ piquant salad dressing or Edward Hayden’s lemon and thyme stuffing, to Mrs Cusack’s brown stew or Antonia Bottoni’s Cape Malay chicken curry.

    2012 October 11, “Famous faces feature in cathedral’s new cookbook”, in Kilkenny People
  2. CaribbeanJamaicacountableuncountablecookingA stew cooked or served with a brown-coloured sauce

    Brown Stew is simply a meat/fish dish in gravy.

    2013, David Daley, Gwendolyn Daley, “No. 6: Brown Stew Chicken”, in Caribbean Cookery Secrets: How to Cook 100 of the Most Popular West Indian, Cajun and Creole Dishes, Little, Brown, →ISBN
    1 more example

    Increasingly preferred was the method known as "brown stew". Sullivan had recommended adding a brown gravy to broiled kingfish and stewing junefish in a brown sauce, thickened with flour.

    2008, B. W. Higman, Jamaican Food: History, Biology, Culture, University of the West Indies Press, →ISBN, page 324

Synonyms & antonyms

antonym(s) of “stew in which the meat is browned before being added”

Opposite
white stew
Cite this entry
APA

brown stew. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/brown%20stew

MLA

“brown stew.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/brown%20stew. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “brown stew,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/brown%20stew.

Source: brown stew on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.