34 Comforting Stew Recipes
Updated: Nov. 28, 2023
The best stew recipes cook the right ingredients until they become melt-in-your-mouth tender. Then it's time to cozy up with a big bowl of goodness!
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Slow-Cooker Beef Stew
Traditional beef stew recipes have to simmer for hours, but we use a slow cooker to make this recipe more hands-off. Brown the stew meat before adding it to the slow cooker to add caramelized flavor to the finished dish.
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Irish Beef Stew
It doesn’t get any more classic than Irish beef stew. The recipe contains a lot of ingredients, but don’t be intimidated: They all come together to create a dish that you’ll be talking about for a while. We especially like the addition of a dark stout beer (like Guinness), which adds a deeply roasted flavor.
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Cowboy Stew
What’s not to love about a one-pot stew recipe that’s ready to serve in 30 minutes? You only need five simple ingredients to make it: ground beef, baked beans, sliced hot dogs, barbecue sauce and Parmesan cheese. Other sausages work well instead of hot dogs, so use chorizo or andouille sausage if that’s what you have on hand.
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Kielbasa Cabbage Stew
Kielbasa is a smoked Polish sausage made with garlic and spices, and it’s the base of this hearty and warming stew. Two cups of shredded cabbage might look like a lot when you’re putting it into the pot, but it will cook down to a manageable amount by the time the potatoes are cooked through.
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Red Flannel Stew
This stew gets its name from the beets that release their deep red hue into the cooking liquid as it simmers. Keep in mind that the corned beef is quite salty, so you won’t need to add too much seasoning. The root vegetables should take in a lot of the salt, but you can soak the corned beef in water for 12 hours before cooking if you’re salt sensitive.
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Traditional Lamb Stew
When you’re in the mood for a classic meat-and-potatoes recipe, this is the stew to make. If you can find it, look for lamb shoulder for this recipe. It becomes very tender when braised, taking this stew to the next level.
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Southern Okra Bean Stew
One of our favorite vegetarian stew recipes becomes rich and thick with the addition of okra. This vegetable has a reputation for being quite slimy, but acidity from the tomatoes tempers its weird texture. If you anticipate making leftovers, keep the rice on the side to preserve the stew’s texture upon reheating.
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Pork and Hominy Stew
In the southwestern U.S., this stew is called posole or pozole for the Nahuatl word for “foam” (referring to the shape of the corn as it cooks). Hominy looks like corn, but it’s bigger with a chewier texture. The stew is rich and savory, and it achieves the perfect flavor when garnished with avocado and lime.
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Moroccan Vegetable Stew
This stew is loved by vegetarians and omnivores alike! It’s impossible to miss all the incredible flavors: buttery chickpeas, sweet butternut squash, creamy potatoes, acidic tomatoes and rich zucchini. Serve this stew with a side of pita bread and finish it with a dollop of yogurt.
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Creamy Chicken & Broccoli Stew
This stew gets its incredible flavor from chicken thighs cooked in Italian dressing and white wine. You can use chicken breasts if you prefer, but the thighs add a richer flavor. To make the dish feel even more comforting, serve the stew over mashed potatoes.
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Skillet Chicken Stew
We don’t always have time to spend all day cooking, so we love having stew recipes like this one in our back pocket. It’s amazing how much flavor can come from so few ingredients! Dredging the chicken in flour before it’s cooked is a great shortcut to thickening the stew without making a roux.
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Tuscan Pork Stew
This saucy stew gets its flavoring from red wine, fennel, black pepper and an unusual secret ingredient: orange marmalade. After several hours in the slow cooker, the pork becomes oh-so-soft and tender. Be sure to serve this one with a side of bread to sop up all the extra sauce, or serve it over thick noodles like fettuccine.
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Squash and Lentil Lamb Stew
There’s nothing traditional about this recipe, but the ingredients come together to create an exotic dish that’s fun and enticing. The savory lamb, sweet squash and grassy spinach are perfectly balanced by the sauce (a combination of coconut milk, peanut butter, red curry paste and hoisin sauce). Finish it off with a squeeze of fresh lime, and you’ll find yourself craving this stew on the regular!
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Mainly Mushroom Beef Carbonnade
A carbonnade is a beef stew cooked in beer, but this recipe gives the classic a twist by adding a ton of portobello mushrooms. These mushrooms maintain their meaty texture as they cook and absorb the seasonings in the cooking liquid to become little flavor bombs. You won’t be sorry if you add more mushrooms than the recipe calls for!
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Cabbage Roll Stew
We love cabbage rolls, but they can be a lot of work. This stew recipe achieves the same flavorful results with a fraction of the work! Instead of using just ground beef, swap in 1/2 pound of Italian sausage to amp up the flavor. To get the full cabbage roll effect, serve this stew over rice.
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Slow-Cooked Stuffed Pepper Stew
Here’s another classic recipe that’s been turned into a stew. Instead of going through the effort of steaming and stuffing peppers, simply toss the ingredients into the slow cooker and let it do its thing.
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Italian Shredded Pork Stew
This stew recipe has a lot going on between all the vegetables, beans and shredded pork, so we were surprised at how simple it was to make. The pork shoulder becomes tender and shreddable in the slow cooker, but it will also release a lot of fat. Be sure to skim that fat from the top of the stew before serving it to avoid a greasy finish.
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Lentil and Pasta Stew
The combination of smoked sausage, ditalini pasta and lentils creates a hearty dish that’s perfect for a cold day. Ditalini is a very short, tube-shaped pasta that’s small enough to fit on a soup spoon. Feel free to substitute another small pasta shape if you can’t find it, like mini shells, tubetinni or macaroni.
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Tuscan Portobello Stew
The beans and vegetables are the stars of this vegan stew, but you won’t notice anyone complaining—it tastes that good! Our recipe uses chopped fresh kale, but feel free to substitute your favorite leafty green, like spinach or Swiss chard. The stew is naturally gluten-free, but it tastes great with a side of crusty bread if allergens aren’t a concern.
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Turkey Biscuit Stew
Need to use up leftover Thanksgiving turkey? Make this warming stew recipe! The recipe calls for baking biscuits on top of the stew to create a flaky topping, but you can bake them on the side if you’re making the stew in advance.
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Slow-Cooked Meatball Stew
Meatballs aren’t a typical stew ingredient, but we think they should be after trying this meatball stew recipe. It’s a great way to use up frozen meatballs, which become soft and tender as they cook in the beefy, tomatoey soup. We recommend using small or mini meatballs, so each bowl gets a plentiful amount.
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Weekday Beef Stew
This stew recipe uses a grocery store shortcut to ensure you can make it any night of the week. Refrigerated beef roast au jus comes cooked and ready to shred, so all you have to do is combine the ingredients and heat them through. Top it off by baking a sheet of puff pastry to take the flavors to the next level.
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Squash & Chicken Stew
Stew is generally rich and hearty, but it doesn’t always feel that healthy. This version uses chicken and butternut squash to create a flavorful but nutritious combination. As a bonus, it looks absolutely gorgeous when scooped into a bowl with pearl couscous.
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Spicy Seafood Stew
If you like things spicy, this stew recipe is for you! The soup base is made in the slow cooker using jarred pasta sauce and cayenne pepper to kick up the heat. When you’re almost ready to serve, add the shrimp and scallops—they should be cooked through in about 15 to 20 minutes.
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Great Northern Bean Stew
This recipe cuts down on the cooking time by using bulk pork sausage, and the flavors come together in less than an hour. The type of sausage you purchase will affect how the dish eats: Regular pork sausage brings a rich, porky flavor while hot Italian sausage will give the stew a spicy bite.
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Turkey Cabbage Stew
Move over, ground beef. There’s a new star in town! This ground turkey stew combines lean meat with chopped cabbage, tomatoes and spices to create a bowl that’s both delicious and easy to make. You can freeze any leftovers for later, but you’ll want to add a little liquid when reheating to get the right texture.
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Pressure-Cooker Beef Stew
Compared to the slow cooker, an electric pressure cooker makes quick work of transforming a boneless beef chuck roast into a pile of tender shredded beef. After pressure-cooking on high for 40 minutes, let the pressure release naturally while you chop the vegetables. While the roast is resting, the stew will finish cooking in only 8 minutes.
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Black-Eyed Pea Sausage Stew
If you’ve never tried black-eyed peas, you’ll want to add this recipe to your weeknight dinner plan. These dense, creamy beans taste fantastic when combined with smoky sausage and sweet corn. The beefy tomato sauce base really brings it all together, creating a rich and comforting bowl that’s ready to eat in just 30 minutes.
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Venison Stew
While most people think of deer when they hear venison, the term technically refers to any game meat—from elk to antelope to wild boar. If you don’t have a hunter in your life, seek out venison stew meat at your local butcher shop.
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Brunswick Stew
Georgia and Virginia have both claimed they’re the birthplace of this famous stew, with Georgia versions featuring pork and Virginia’s including chicken. Ours contains both along with beef to create a stew that’s filling enough to serve as a main meal. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t serve it the traditional way—as a side for ribs along with coleslaw, potato salad and baked beans.
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Lentil Pepperoni Stew
Turkey pepperoni nicely spices this thick lentil stew with rich tomato broth. This is a stick-to-your-ribs mainstay at our house.
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Apple Chicken Stew
This stew is perfect for crisp fall days when the leaves have turned colors and orchards harvest apples at a breakneck pace. It contains apple cider in the broth for a deep apple flavor, and cubes of tart apple (like Granny Smith) to infuse the fruit into every bite.
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Jamaican-Style Beef Stew
The aroma of this Jamaican-style beef stew will fill the entire house, causing stomachs to grumble with hunger long before the stew is ready. We use leaner top sirloin in this recipe, which has a more beef-forward flavor compared to stew meat, and it takes a fraction of the time to become tender.
Originally Published: December 13, 2021
