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It is a dish that sticks to the body and warms up. In Belgium, waterzooï, the country’s specialty soup, delights the taste buds of Belgians. Formerly a dish of the poor, waterzooï is eaten today as a festive dish to share with the family.
It can be found in all the good brasseries in Brussels: the waterzooï, a very creamy dish that warms up in winter. “It’s not the national dish, but we’re not far from it”says a customer. The waterzooi vsis above all a family dish. In the Jooris family, Eric, the dad, is a specialist. The recipe is passed down from generation to generation. In Flemish, waterzooi means “water boiling”. The principle is therefore simple: you have to cook all the food together in a big pot. “It’s a fully integrated dish if you can say, you can’t say: ‘I don’t like a part’, it’s all or nothing”says Eric.
At the family Jooristhe dish represents festive moments, at Christmas or New Year. Belgians cook this soup with chicken or fish. It’s in Ghent (Belgium) that the dish was born. On a roof, Jean-Philippe Watteynechef, makes his harvest of the day. He prepares the waterzooi with fish. But instead of cooking everything in a pot, he heats each food in a pan to avoid overcooking. The old soup kitchen has therefore become a put refined.