Louisiana Gumbo

A pot full of history

Gumbo was born in eighteenth-century Louisiana, and its ingredients tell the story of the people who lived there. The name most likely comes from a West African word for okra, a vegetable carried across the Atlantic during the slave trade, and enslaved African cooks shaped the dish. French settlers brought roux, flour cooked in fat. Spanish colonial rule brought new settlers, including Canary Islanders, and a taste for peppers and spice, and the Choctaw people contributed filé, ground dried sassafras leaves.

Written accounts describe gumbo by 1802, a printed recipe appeared in 1824, and in 2004 the Louisiana legislature made gumbo the official state cuisine.

Three ways to thicken

Most gumbos start with a roux cooked slowly, sometimes for close to an hour, until it is the color of peanut butter or dark chocolate. The darker it gets, the nuttier the flavor, though a dark roux thickens less. Okra adds body and a silky texture, and filé is stirred in off the heat at the end or at the table. Cooks argue happily about whether okra and filé should ever share a pot.

Nearly every gumbo starts with the holy trinity of Louisiana cooking: chopped onion, celery and green bell pepper, a local cousin of the French mirepoix. They go into the hot roux, which stops it from darkening further and releases a wonderful toasted aroma. From there, the pot can hold almost anything: chicken, smoked sausage, duck, shrimp, crab, oysters or even turkey after Thanksgiving. Gumbo is typically cooked for a long time, which lets all these flavors blend.

Creole and Cajun

Creole gumbo, associated with New Orleans, often includes tomatoes and is frequently built on seafood: shrimp, crab and oysters. Cajun gumbo, from the rural southwest of the state, usually skips tomatoes and leans on a very dark roux with chicken and smoked andouille sausage, or duck and other game. Gumbo z'herbes, a green gumbo made from many kinds of greens, is a Holy Thursday tradition made famous by the late New Orleans chef Leah Chase.

How to serve it

Gumbo is a soup-like stew ladled over a scoop of white rice. Bottles of hot sauce and filé sit on the table. In parts of Cajun country, a spoonful of potato salad goes right into the bowl. It always tastes better the next day, which is why many families make a giant pot.

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