You know that folk tale about “Stone Soup,” where hungry travelers put a stone in a pot of water and then everyone in town shows up to add ingredients and make a delicious soup? Well, something similar has been happening for more than a month in Brooklyn, New York.

A 23-year-old woman named Annie Rauwerda, who runs Instagram account @depthsofwikipedia, has teamed up with two friends, boyfriend David Shayne, 27, and friend Hajin Yoo, 23 — they call themselves the “three stew-ges” — to make what she is calling “perpetual stew.”

Rauwerda started cooking her stew, which is strictly vegan, in a slow cooker in her kitchen.

“I’ve got a potato leek simmering in the Crockpot and it feels like the first day of the rest of my life,” Rauwerda mused on June 7, the day she started her stew.

The stew has now been cooking for, on day of this article’s publication, 45 days, and it has its own website, on which Rauwerda chronicles its progress and shares her thoughts along with many, many stew puns. (Don’t call them “stew-pid!”)

The stew has also expanded way beyond its initial role of feeding the three friends. Sometime in early June, they began inviting friends over to share it, each person bringing something to contribute to the stew.

Then more friends came with offerings to add to the stew — garlic, onions, beansprouts. Then the stew moved outside, to a local park, and neighbors showed up to contribute to it and enjoy it. More and more. Hundreds of strangers. They brought ingredients. Bread. Spoons. Bowls. Drinks.

“Pretty much whatever as long as there’s no meat,” Rauwerda wrote on the perpetual stew site’s FAQ. Some ingredients may be thrown right in, although Rauwerda carefully monitors stew additions (and tracks them) to ensure safety and, we suppose, to some degree, acceptable flavor; others are saved for the next batch, if they require too much prep. “We recommend pre-chopping/cooking/boiling any ingredients if you'd like to see your contribution added ASAP,” she shares.

The perpetual stew has become a perpetual party. It is now cooked in a cast-iron cauldron, has gone viral on TikTok and generated news coverage. There’s even stew merch.

Rauwerda and her pals spent a while looking for someone named Stew or Stu to be the guest of honor. When no Stew or Stu emerged, she expanded her search to Sues. One night, a Stu finally arrived, followed not long later by a Stew.

On July 20, the last night Rauwerda posted on the perpetual stew website before taking a break for vacation (someone else is minding the stew; the stew party will resume on August 6, 2023 at Fermi Playground in Brooklyn, RSVP here; it’s fine to show up alone), she wrote, in what feels like a marker of how far the perpetual stew has come, “We had three people named Stu/Stew at the last stew night — so many guests of honor that we ran out of crowns. Didn’t run out of stew, though.”

As for how the stew tastes, and whether it’s actually good, Rauwerda admits that it, “completely depends on the day.”

July 9, 2023, sounds like a banner stew day: “No wonder Biblical Esau gave up his birthright for this stuff,” Rauwerda writes.

And yes, because it’s always kept at boiling temperature (there was a close call on June 14 when Shayne briefly blew a fuse making toast), and the ingredients are cycled out at a fast pace, it should be safe to eat. Perpetual stews have been around for a while and “have simmered for years on end!” she notes.

Food Network Kitchen recipe developer Amanda Neal says the concept of a perpetual stew “is great for community building and bringing people together around food” and also “for reducing waste,” since whatever is left of one stew becomes the basis for its next iteration. But she offers this important safety note for those who intend to try it themselves: “Be sure to properly cool down and store your stew between batches to ensure no food-borne illnesses.”

For her part, Rauwerda has been blown away by the response. “I know I made this whole endeavor kind of public with the TikTok and with the website and with the daily stew log,” she says in a TikTok post, “but still, I never really expected this kind of crowd and this kind of excitement.”

For stew. Which maybe you’re now hungry for. So here are some recipes.

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