Frogmore Stew, or Lowcountry Boil, is a popular southern dish, especially in the Georgia and South Carolina Lowcountry. Frogmore Stew is a delicious one-pot meal that features potatoes, smoked sausage, corn on the cob, shrimp, and sometimes blue crab. The dish is typically prepared with seafood seasoning, such as Old Bay, and drained of liquid, despite being called a stew. It can be a communal meal or enjoyed by one person.
Richard Gay of Gay Fish Company was from Frogmore on St. Helena Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Gay served in Beaufort’s National Guard in the 1960s. One weekend, he took all of the mess hall’s leftovers and dumped them in a pot. The leftovers included potatoes, onions, corn on the cob, sausage, and he threw in the shrimp last (because they have a short cooking time). All of this took about an hour to cook and was initially called Beaufort Stew. The dish was a hit amongst Gay’s National Guard unit. His unit teased him about the name of his hometown: Frogmore. The unit jokingly told him the name of the dish should be Frogmore Stew, and the name stuck. Richard Gay created Frogmore Stew.
South Carolina’s Lowcountry Region.
Courtesy of South Carolina Lowcountry and Resort Islands.
Richard Gay, creator of Frogmore stew, in 2021.
Courtesy of Don Sniegowski. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
This dish has a communal eating aspect; cooking techniques and ingredients are rooted in the food traditions of the Gullah Geechee people. Many of the Gullah Geechee people are descended from enslaved West Africans who worked the cotton, indigo, and rice plantations of the Lowcountry regions of South Carolina, including Frogmore, Georgia, and Florida. The Gullah Geechee people would cook one-pot meals using what seafood and vegetables were available in the Lowcountry. They would then use that large one-pot meal to serve large gatherings of people, especially when celebrating special occasions.
Today, most people refer to the dish as a Lowcountry Boil and have likely never heard of Frogmore Stew. The town of Frogmore, South Carolina, lost its identity in 1988 when the United States Postal Service removed the post office. The name of the stew faded with the name of the town.
Frogmore was a known town before its post office was taken away. This is Gantt Cottage at the Penn Center in Frogmore. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed at this cottage, where he worked and drafted his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Courtesy of Timothy Brown. CC BY 2.0.
Frogmore Stew is featured on menus across the Lowcountry and beyond. Bubba Gumbo’s on Tybee Island serves a Low Country Boil. Skull Creek Dockside Restaurant, located on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, also serves a Lowcountry Boil. The Lowcountry Boil can also be found outside of the Lowcountry region, at places like PoBoy’s Low Country Seafood Market in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Frogmore Stew can be prepared at home and eaten communally. It is common for people to prepare large pots of stew, and large groups often eat the dish together. Gay’s recipe for Lowcountry Boil is butter, salt, Old Bay or crab boil, onion, small red potatoes, corn, Hillshire sausage, medium shrimp, and blue crabs. If making this for a large group, the cook would line a table with newspaper and dump the stew on the table for family and friends to gather around. The dish is typically accompanied by various condiments, such as hot sauce, mustard, tartar sauce, and cocktail sauce, among others. Then people are free to graze and fellowship.
The Lowcountry Boil at Skull Creek Dockside Restaurant.
Courtesy of Skull Creek Dockside Restaurant.
A fresh bowl of Frogmore stew.
Courtesy of Chotda. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
