Clean and dress the meat of a soft-shelled turtle, a painted turtle, a
poker-dot turtle, or almost any other kind of turtle. Clean and dress a
rabbit, a ruffled grouse, moose meat, elk meat, deer meat, sheep meat,
in fact any sort of game. Cut your meat into pieces about the size of
inch cubes. Save the bones, especially the marrow bones, to put in with
the meat. Add some salt pork cut into cubes, if you have it.
If you have been thoughtful enough to supply your outfit with some
ill-smelling, but palatable dry vegetables, they will add flavor to
your burgoo, put all the material in a kettle, and fill the kettle half
full of water. If you have beans and potatoes do not put them in with
the meat because they will go to the bottom and scorch. While the stuff
you have already put in the kettle is boiling, or simmering, peel your
onions and quarter them, scrape your carrots and slice them, peel your
potatoes, cut them up into pieces—about inch cubes. After your caldron
has commenced to boil dump in the fresh vegetables, they will cool off
the water and kill the boil. Do not let it come to a boil again, but
put it over a slow fire and allow it to simmer. There should always
be enough water to cover the vegetables. A can of tomatoes will add
greatly to the flavor. Use no sweet vegetables like beets or sweet
potatoes. Put the salt and pepper in just before you take it off the
fire. When the burgoo is done, strain it into tin cups. The liquid
out of an olive bottle adds greatly to the flavor if you pour it in
while the stew is cooking. If you have such luxuries in camp as olives
and lemons, a slice of lemon with an olive in each cup over which the
liquid is poured makes a dish too good for any old king that ever lived.
The excellence of a burgoo depends upon two things, the materials
you have of which to make it and the care you take in cooking it. No
two burgoos are alike, and every one I ever tasted was mighty good.
Civilized material such as can be purchased at the butcher shop and
the vegetable store makes a good soup, but the “goo” isn’t there.
Consequently you cannot call it a burgoo.