Big soup stew or soup?!

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I can tell you without any shadow of a doubt that stew does not come in tins, and neither is it a soup. It is also not a casserole as some seem to think. What you get in tins is anybodies guess... but likely to be substandard ingredients in a glutinous liquid made up primarily of starchy thickeners, chemical flavourings, sugar and salt.

A stew is made of fresh meat simmered in water for 1.5 hours. While the meat is tenderising, peel fresh vegetables ready for adding to the meat (and water, which is now a stock), but also boil all the vegetable peelings to make a further veggie stock in a saucepan. You may add a further stock cube if you wish. A little salt may also be used for seasoning and fresh ground black pepper.

The stew pot should now have lots of stock that covers all the meat and the veggies you want to add. Add the veggies, and immediately make up a mix of beef suet and self raising flour with a little water to make a sticky paste. Form the paste into evenly sized balls and place on top of the stew for 25 minutes and simmer.

Stew is a tasty stock with chunky vegetables, melt in the mouth beef or lamb... and gorgeous dumplings. It is nothing else.

I forgot to add... dried herbs are ok, but fresh rosemary or thyme make a meal fit for a king. Henry VIII to be precise! ;-)

Love Man, I think your products would be pretty similar to ours. I think big soup is just soup with bigger chunks, I am only guessing. We have something similar by Campbell's, it's labeled soup but it's very thick.