The Etymology of Booyah: Fact-Checking Stuart Scott's Catchphrase and Belgian Stew

A fresh look at The Etymology of Booyah: Fact-Checking Stuart Scott's Catchphrase and Belgian Stew, offering readers critical context.

Hundreds of miles northwest of ESPN headquarters, long-time Wisconsin residents reacted to the national SportsCenter craze with quiet amusement. In Green Bay, De Pere, and Algoma, booyah was not a noise you shouted; it was something you cooked in a 50-gallon steel vat over open wood fires for twelve hours.

The stew arrived in Northeastern Wisconsin alongside thousands of Walloon Belgian immigrants who settled the Door Peninsula and Fox River Valley during the 1850s. Facing bitter Midwestern winters and clearing dense timber, community members pooled whatever meats and garden vegetables they could harvest. A proper booyah became an exercise in communal subsistence, blending retired stewing hens, beef shanks, pork butt, cabbage, carrots, corn, peas, and navy beans into a thick, gelatinous broth.

Cooking the dish evolved into outdoor kettle cooking events run by dedicated "booyah masters" or booyah cooks. Rather than an individual family recipe cooked on a kitchen stove, the preparation functioned as a social gathering. Fire departments, Catholic parishes, and fraternal organizations built massive wheeled trailers equipped with custom cast-iron kettles to feed hundreds at church picnics and seasonal festivals.

As reported by the Green Bay Press-Gazette, what booyah actually consists of depends heavily on which parish or family patriarch stands over the ladle. Some insist on ox-tail, others reject pork, and purists demand slow-cooked stewing hens with the meat hand-shredded off the bone.