Cooking Up Booyah
With falling temperatures and the holidays around the corner, for many it is the perfect opportunity to cook up a batch of hearty booyah. The dish, which features cuts of chicken and beef or pork (and sometimes all three!) and various vegetables and seasonings, is a tradition in northern Wisconsin, as well as in Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Booyah is thought to have roots with the Walloons, a group of French speaking people from Belgium northeast of Paris, who immigrated to the United States in the mid 1800s. In fact, booyah, along with several other similar words for several other similar dishes in Minnesota and Michigan, is thought to be a variation of the French word “bouillon”, which translates to broth in English and is frequently used in English countries (e.g. bouillon cubes). A newspaper article published in 1976 speculates the term booyah was first used in Green Bay, WI. Suitably, Green Bay’s Northwoods League baseball team was named the Green Bay Booyah for the 2019 and 2020 seasons. Booyah is sometimes prepared in huge batches, such as in 50 gallon steel or cast iron kettles, and served at social gatherings, of which can also be refered to using the term booyah.
Either way, there is no time to delay, as booyah can take up to two days to make, simmering the whole time. Visit Bucky’s Varsity Meats for the chicken, beef, and pork you will need, and check out Melissa Belanger’s booyah recipe at her Simply Whisked by following the link in the red box below!
Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash.
This article was posted in Program Features.