Forum: cooking.stackexchange.com
Tags: <language><traditional><stews><english-cuisine>
Title: Is there a difference between Stew and Casserole?
Question: Is there a proper distinction between a slow cooked meat dish labelled a casserole and one labelled stew?   And if there is a traditional distinction would it be fair to say that the distinction is no longer observed?

Answers:
sents: text: Is there some dialectical thing going on here?
text: I have always known stews as stovetop and casseroles as baked, just as Jared said in his comment.
text: See for example on wikipedia: stew vs. casserole ; or in Merriam-Webster: stew (click the verb form) vs. casserole .
text: (Casserole refers to the dish as well as the food cooked in it; it's pretty definitely something you would only bake in.)
text: Now
text: and then I see things get muddled when I'm reading recipes, but these are definitely the meanings I grew up with and see in the vast majority of what I read.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/1672/Cascabel
score: 11
sents: text: In addition to Joe's great answer , in my childhood (where they were usually called 'bakes' (the food), but they came out of a 'casserole' (the vessel).)
text: I learned two other important differences: time.
text: A 'stew' was never done in less than 2 hours.
text: It wasn't uncommon for it to bubble away in the crock pot or a dutch oven for 4 or 5 hours.
text: A 'bake' by comparison was usually well under an hour in the oven and then done.
text: If the menu called for a stew, and it wasn't already bubbling along and the kitchen cleaned up when I got home from school, I made sure I got a decent snack for myself, 'cause dinner would be a tad later than normal.
text: :)
text: meal vs entree.
text: A 'stew' was traditionally an entire meal.
text: It might be served with some bread or roles to dredge up the last bits from your bowl, but the stew was really the entire meal.
text: A 'bake' always had supporting dishes of some sort.
text: Chicken noodle casserole came to the table with green beans (sometimes in a casserole of their own.)
text: and carrots on the side, lasagna arrived with a salad and garlic bread.
text: etc.
text: As to your second question, I still see the distinction in my family, my wife's family, friends and many formally trained cooks.
text: But largely I think because I'm in the midwest, where hotdish is king, and everyone here knows what hotdish is; I see more blurring of the line between 'soup' and 'stew' than I do 'stew' and 'casserole/bake/hotdish' to be honest.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/3158/cabbey
score: 6
sents: text: In today's modern culture and cooking style, the difference is likely unobserved.
text: I would consider a stew less constructed than a casserole, however.
text: While the stew would start with generally uncooked ingredients (perhaps except for browning the meat, and likely be mixed together while cooking to give a single-dish of meat, vegetables and sauce.
text: A casserole might include some cooked ingredients, often be more properly layered and probably not mixed while cooking.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/835/sdg
score: 5
sents: text: As Jared mentioned, 'stewing' always involves a fair amount of liquid -- it's a slow, moist cooking process.
text: It's not quite a braise, as with a braise, the item is only partially submerged, whereas with a stew, you have smaller chunks of things that might float, but for the most part are submerged.
text: You can make really thick stews (I tend to grate a potato into the stew towards the end to get it to thicken up '
text: til it's thick like a good gravy), but they tend to be loose, not a single congealed mass.
text: It might be an American thing, but 'stew' in general is always assumed to have meat in it (typically a red meat, eg.
text: beef or venison) Casseroles (might be called a 'bake' or a 'hotdish' depending on your region) are almost always baked and untouched during the baking process.
text: They can be layered (as with a lasagne or a shepherd's pie) but can also be just a mixture put into a baking dish and tossed in the oven (eg, my mom's tuna noodle casserole ...
text: but she might've topped it with some extra cheese or breadcrumbs, so I guess you can consider that a layer).
text: Casseroles tend to be less 'soupy' than a stew -- some will hold their own shape when they're scooped, if let to cool down for a few minutes after they come out of the oven.
text: (eg, lasagne, most macaroni & cheese casseroles) ...
text: as it looks like you're from the UK, it's possible that these distinctions aren't made over there.
text: If the terms are used differently outside the US, please add to the Translating Cooking Terms post.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/67/Joe
score: 5
sents: text: One factor not mentioned in the other answers is that there is a class of cookware called a "casserole dish" -- ceramic or pyrex, somewhat shallow, often with a lid.
text: I suppose it follows that a casserole is the kind of dish you prepare in such a vessel.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/4214/slim
score: 3
sents: text: I went to the dictionary for definitons of casserole and stew.
text: As pointed out above, the main difference and the description, lies in the cooking vessel used.
text: A casserole is a covered oven based dish whilst a stew is commonly stove-top, covered or not, using more liquid to cook the ingredients.
text: Slow cookers arrived on the market.
text: I supposed these would be closer to the casserole definition?
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/42766/Colin Rowley
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
The difference could be in the type of dish used, whether it is baked or cooked on a stove and covered or not, and the consistency of the dish. In modern cooking, the distinction is likely not observed.
A casserole is cooked in the oven while a stew is cooked on the stove top, however this difference is not generally respected anymore.