Giju stew was a dish with a foul odor that was best made with a bit of Boontaspice. Luke Skywalker encountered Giju stew from his youth on the planet Tatooine, when his Aunt Beru Lars used to make it, to his days fighting with the Rebel Alliance and later the New Republic. In one instance, Lando Calrissian made a vain attempt at serving Giju stew to a repulsed Skywalker and Leia Organa after using too much Boontaspice in his recipe.
Lando Calrissian of the Rebel Alliance once served Giju stew to his friends Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and the Wookiee Chewbacca while aboard the starship Millennium Falcon in 3.5 ABY. Although Calrissian spent an hour preparing the meal in the ship's galley, his friends refused to touch his concoction, which both Skywalker and Organa thought resembled a cross between melted boot plastic and fertilizer sprinkled with pond scum. Proud of his creation, Calrissian sampled the stew himself but found to his disgust that he had used too much Boontaspice in his recipe. He then scrapped the meal and decided to eat something else.
In 26 ABY, during the Yuuzhan Vong War, Skywalker and wife Mara Jade Skywalker took a brief respite from their struggles on an island beach. As Skywalker walked barefoot through the beach's sand, memories of his youth on the desert planet Tatooine filled his thoughts, and he could nearly smell the Giju stew that his Aunt Beru Lars used to make. Later during the war, in 28 ABY, Skywalker consumed a bowl of Giju stew in the presence of his wife and Cal Omas on the New Republic Fleet Command space station, shortly before Omas's election to New Republic Chief of State.
Giju stew first appeared in the May 1996 novel Shadows of the Empire, written by Steve Perry. It was later featured in two novels of The New Jedi Order series, Edge of Victory II: Rebirth by Greg Keyes (2001) and Destiny's Way by Walter Jon Williams (2002).
The stew's name references Giju, the home planet of the Herglic species, which originated in the 1992 Dark Force Rising Sourcebook, a Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game supplement. However, while "Giju stew" is capitalized in both Shadows of the Empire and the 1998 Star Wars Encyclopedia, its name is formatted lower case as "giju stew" in the aforementioned The New Jedi Order novels as well as the 2008 The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. Nevertheless, as "Giju" is a proper noun in relation to the planet name, this article uses the capitalized format.
- Star Wars Encyclopedia
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia