Our Best Louisiana-Style Gumbo Recipes - MyRecipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to good gumbo? ›

Great gumbo starts with roux, a flavorful thickening agent made from equal parts fat and flour. Once the roux is a deep golden color, add diced veggies and sausage to the mix. Then, incorporate beef bouillon, hot sauce, tomatoes, and seasonings to intensify the flavor.

Thou Shalt Always Use a Bowl. If you use a plate, it is not gumbo it is rice and gravy! Thou Shalt Only Use a Wooden Spoon. There is only one kind of spoon that can enter a gumbo pot and that is a wooden one.

Most cooks agree that gumbos must have the vegetable trinity of chopped bell pepper, onion and celery, and that they should be highly seasoned. Some gumbos do contain sausage, shrimp and chicken, but there are humbler ones that are made with only salt pork, onions and greens.

Two well-known types of gumbo are seafood gumbo, which often includes shrimp, oysters and crabs, and chicken-and-sausage gumbo, made with andouille sausage. Okra gumbo utilizes okra to thicken the stew; common varieties include shrimp-and-okra or chicken-and-okra gumbo.

In order to develop a deep roasted flavor in your gumbo, you should cook your roux — being careful not to burn — until it is a deep dark brown color. "Roux needs to be cooked low and slow to bring out the nutty flavor and rich dark color without burning it," says Chef Dickensauge of Houndstooth Saloon in Chicago.

Even common, store-bought chicken broth adds more flavor than water. One of my favorite easy broths is to take leftover shrimp shells and simmer them with boxed chicken broth. The shrimp shells act as a clarifier (clearing out any negative flavors), and as a flavoring, giving the broth a fresh shrimp essence.

Using an off ratio of flour to fat can pose a number of problems. Using too much flour can cause the flour to clump up in the oil, which will then lead to pockets of flour going uncooked and making the gumbo gritty and floury. Too much oil, and you risk the roux not thickening properly, which can mean a watery gumbo.

Gumbo is almost always served with rice, but it was at the winery that I learned that some Cajuns serve potato salad with it. Some even put the potato salad in the bowl WITH the gumbo.

The Holy Trinity is the Cajun and Creole counterpart to this trio, consisting of onion, celery, and rather than carrot, green bell peppers. Just like mirepoix, the Holy Trinity is one of the first things to hit the pan, acting as an aromatic base for dishes like Gumbo, Jambalaya, and Crawfish Étouffée.

It should be thicker than a soup.

Should gumbo have tomatoes? ›

Turns out, your preference for tomatoes in gumbo comes down to whether you learned your skills from a Cajun cook or a Creole cook. (Learn about the difference here.) Cajun gumbo does not include tomatoes in the base, but Creole gumbo (typically shellfish or seafood gumbo) does call for tomatoes.

For purposes of this discussion, we will limit our focus to plain old polished white rice. Even then, it comes in different sizes — short, long and medium grain. I prefer medium grain rice in a gumbo, because the grains puff up, the perfect medium for a gumbo. The thick gumbo juice sticks to the grains just right.

Gumbo is often categorized by the type of thickener used, whether okra or filé powder (dried and ground sassafras leaves). Gumbo can be made with or without okra or filé powder.

“Anytime you talk about gumbo, it's a long conversation,” says Frank Brigtsen, the chef-owner of New Orleans Cajun-Creole restaurant Brigtsen's. “Of all the dishes in Louisiana, gumbo really stands out as unique and identifies us as Louisiana people. And to me the best gumbo in the world is the gumbo you grew up with.

The "holy trinity" in Cajun cuisine and Louisiana Creole cuisine is the base for several dishes in the regional cuisines of Louisiana and consists of onions, bell peppers and celery. The preparation of Cajun/Creole dishes such as crawfish étouffée, gumbo, and jambalaya all start from this base.

1) Make a good roux.

If you can learn to make a roux for gumbo, your gravy will love you. 2) Keep to the “trinity.” In Louisiana cooking, the “trinity” refers to the combination of onion, celery and green pepper as the basic aromatics. This union provides a specific flavor. 3) Simmer a bit.

Filé can provide thickening when okra is not in season, in types of gumbo that use okra or a roux as a thickener for gumbo instead of filé. Sprinkled sparingly over gumbo as a seasoning and a thickening agent, filé powder adds a distinctive, earthy flavor and texture.

Turns out, your preference for tomatoes in gumbo comes down to whether you learned your skills from a Cajun cook or a Creole cook. (Learn about the difference here.) Cajun gumbo does not include tomatoes in the base, but Creole gumbo (typically shellfish or seafood gumbo) does call for tomatoes.