#10 Gumbo
March 31, 2008 by chuval
I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I didn’t talk about the ultimate Cajun meal…gumbo! Now I’ve held off talking about gumbo for this long to avoid covering the most common Cajun topics, but enough is enough. There’s no denying gumbo’s place in a Cajun’s heart…or belly.
The very word gumbo makes a Cajun man or woman drool like ‘dem dogs with the bells and stuff. Gumbo is the ultimate Cajun comfort food, enjoyed on a cold night with friends and family, or by your lonesome if you don’t feel like sharing the good stuff. Eating it brings back memories of childhood, of the gumbos made with love by your mama or mom-mom. Cajuns have even coined the term ‘gumbo weather’ to hint to each other that it might be time to whip up a pot…and invite us over. Pretty much anything under 60 degrees is considered ‘gumbo weather’ to a coonass.
Gumbo is basically a stew or thick soup, made with a handful of simple ingredients, and served over rice. You start with water and a thickening agent like okra or roux (depending on the type of gumbo), then we add the holy trinity, or Cajun Mirepoix, which is a magical combination of onions, celery, and bell pepper that gives most Cajun food its signature flavor. After that, we throw in some meat and sausage, season with salt, cayenne, and garlic, and let it cook till it’s done.
There are no hard and fast rules for making gumbo. Each family has their own special recipe passed down over the generations. Think of them as Cajun snowflakes, each unique in their own special way. That said, there are NO TOMATOES in a real Cajun gumbo! Sorry, but there are few things that’ll make a Cajun man’s blood boil faster than trying to pass off a fake gumbo. You might find tomatoes in a New Orleans, or Creole gumbo, but that’s an entirely different beast than a Cajun gumbo. If a restaurant tries to serve you a tomato gumbo, demand a refund…cause you been ripped off.
Here’s a good chicken gumbo recipe I found online. You can save some time on the roux by buying it in a jar (sometimes we cheat a little). Next time ‘gumbo weather’ rolls around, I’ll try to write down my own recipe and post it (I usually just eyeball everything).
I just GOTTA have shrimp, chicken, AND sausage in mine. ALL THREE! Btw: Disneyland’s Blue Bayou restaurant in New Orleans Square makes an excellent gumbo!
My favorite is my mom’s seafood gumbo. Shrimp and okra is a close second, followed by chicken and sausage. Throw in a spoonful of chow chow or hot sauce, and I’m good to go.
WORD! I HATE when restaurants and/or people put tomatoes in their gumbo! GROSS! Same with jambalaya. DOES NOT belong! GAH. That’s Creole, not Cajun. ICK.
and would you believe that my husband prefers Mam Papaul’s boxed gumbo mix over homemade? (i know, WTF?) but in a pinch, I’ll use it because it saves me a TON of time and effort!
and you are right, everyone’s gumbo is different- what I find interesting is that down the bayou, near Cut off, etc. people put potato salad in their gumbo instead of rice. I had never seen that until my sister moved to Bayou Gauche and she started seeing her neighbors do that!
My family is from Cenla, like I mentioned before, so they were strictly rice people- but do people in Acadiana do it that way?
I sometimes write about “stuff Louisiana people do and/or like” in my blog- I’d love your input on some of it sometime. Just click on the “Louisiana” tags.
I’ve been known to put a scoop of potato salad in my gumbo, but that’s in addition to rice, not instead of it. Gotta have my daily dose of vitamin R.
My grandfather is the only person I can remember who put potato salad in his gumbo. But he had rice in there, too. He lived his entired life in Acadia parish.
These days, if we’re having potato salad, I like to do the same - ca c’est bon, yeah!
As a conessieur of fine gumbo, I NEVER order gumbo in a restaurant outside of Lafayette Parish. Even New Orleans gumbo gets a little to “red” for me.
In Mobile, they think they invented gumbo and it all has a tomato base. No use arguing with them, though. I mean, these are people who are still hoping that “The Bear” will somehow be resurected from the dead to come back to coach The Tide.
Put me down for the potato salad in the gumbo, but sans rice. Also, nothing better than a baked sweet potato with that gumbo.
Mom mom bakes fresh sweet potatoes to go alongside her gumbos. The sweetness goes nicely with the spicyness of the gumbo.
I’ve never seen red gumbo.. ever… my people are from the Treme. Red is for jambalaya. Brown is for gumbo.
The best gumbo, cher, is not in our restaurants. It’s in our kitchens. They got a thousand ways to make gumbo and everybody like to make their’s a bit different. No, I don’t put tomatoes non potatoes in mah gumbo. Get your roux just right - t’row in your onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic - then get creative wit’ your seafood or chicken/sausage. I like to drop eggs in mine. Some prefer potato salad while others prefer sweet potato to go along with it. Depends on what part of acadiana you from.
Got that right, nothing better than home cooked gumbo (especially on the second day). I’m more partial to sweet potato, but I like potato salad in my gumbo too. Call me a cheater, but I usually use Kary Roux (or Pat’s), and keep adding until I get the right consistency.
Please refer to my website (ok, it is a myspace page) but I’m actually trying to get my PhD on mapping gumbo recipes so if anyone has one they want to share and be part of the mapping process please shoot me an e-mail. Make sure you state where in Acadiana you are from
Ok, I’ll link to you, despite my dislike for all things Myspace (isn’t use of MySpace enough to disqualify any PhD candidate?) Anyway, keep up the good work. Next time I cook a gumbo, I might commit the recipe to paper so you can see what a Cecilia gumbo is like.
Not that I feel like I have to explain myself but I figured the myspace page would be another avenue to get informants/contacts since ethnography is a major portion of my project. Plus it was good for a laugh at the conference I presented the preliminary research to in April.
I was just poking some fun. I find the whole idea of mapping local gumbo variations very interesting, if not challenging. You could pick any street in Acadiana and each house would have their own unique gumbo recipes. I propose finding the exact boundary where tomatoes get introduced and redraw Cajun Country based on that. Good luck with your work.
Yeah, the tomato in gumbo thing is apparently a point of contention. I grew up with the notion that if you put a tomato in gumbo then it is “Creole”. However, when I started doing this project I received a number of gumbos from people claiming to be Cajun who put a can of rotel in their gumbos. At first I thought well this must be a New Orleans thing thiking that the closer you are to NO, the more likely you will put a tomato or 2 in the gumbo. However, after mapping the recipes I found that both Eastern and Western Acadiana are more likely to have tomato while Central Acadiana are much more purist. At the same time Central Acadiana gumbos are more likely to use more vegetables so go figure.