Chicken Booyah

Booyah!

I had never heard of Booyah prior to moving to Northeast Wisconsin, where it is a staple at church picnics and family gatherings. The easiest (and probably most sacrilegious) way to describe booyah is glorified chicken soup.

This is my husband's family recipe, which makes approximately 20 gallons of soup. One important aspect of booyah is that it is cooked outside in a 50-gallon drum for the majority of a day. Normally leftovers are frozen into ice cream pails, but we are short on freezer space. That resulted in us canning approximately 17 pints, with one ice cream pail remaining in freezer storage for us.

Chicken Booyah
16 lb. stewing chickens
3 lb. stewing beef
3 lb. onions, diced
2 bunches of celery, diced
20 carrots, peeled and diced
3 cans mixed vegetables
1 can corn
1 head cabbage, shredded
12 lb. potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 quart tomato juice
2 cans tomato soup
3/4 cup salt
5 Tbsp. pepper

Boil meat in water for two hours until chicken falls off of bones. Remove skin and bones. (Note: This can be done in roasters ahead of time. Just freeze the meat in the liquid until you're ready to make the batch of booyah.)

Bring meat and liquid mixture back to a rolling boil. Add onions, celery and carrots. Boil for another two hours, and then add remaining ingredients. Return to a boil, and cook for an additional two hours.

Note: You can continue to cook the booyah longer. The longer it cooks in the day, the better it tastes.