hey everyone it's matt at rapid creek cidery out
at wilson's orchard we're talking about gumbo today
it's a big history so we can't cover it all here gumbo is uh pretty ubiquitous in
the southern half of louisiana the origins kind of a mixed bag just like gumbo itself
some of the origins include west african slave trade coming into the new orleans port
bringing their combo kombo is the word that i've seen and then from there it gets influenced by
the spanish population that's there the caribbean population even the italian sicilian population
is there and so all that becomes its own thing and everybody has their own way of doing it
and they're all delicious and my wife's family is cajun they came to southern louisiana around
the time of the revolutionary war the late 1700s they moved down with the kdns from southern canada
and then they picked it up and they do their own style generally a lot of the gumbos in
new orleans are more creole in nature going to be a little thicker usually have some kind of
tomato product in there like chopped tomatoes or tomato puree the cajun gumbos are definitely more
brothy and more of a soup and of course near the coast you're going to have more shrimp and crab
gumbos a little inland you'll have more chicken and game the cajuns and the french influence a
lot of homemade sausages the cajuns are known for as being hunters and fisher and traders and
they would make sausage and smoke it that's the andouille the classic andouille so it really is
a mixed bag of uh styles and flavors that kind of made this really iconic southern louisiana dish
you're always going to make a roux that's kind of classic with lighter dishes like a shrimp or
or a crab you might make a little lighter roux but for andouille and chicken and duck say you're
gonna make a really dark roux and that's part of the practice part of the real hard part about it
is getting that roux just right so that's oil or butter and flour you're gonna do it real low and
slow in a big pot stirring constantly so you don't get the bottom burned and you know with
a seafood gumbo you can go a little lighter they talk about the different stages there's a popcorn
stage of color there's a peanut butter stage in terms of it gets darker it actually starts
smelling like that a little bit as well then you go into milk chocolate in a dark chocolate phase
there's even something called a black uh roux which is really hard to get it's a really fine
line between burnt and delicious so you get that going it might take a half hour my wife's family
from southern louisiana they have different ways of doing it down there you can even buy a roux
ready to go in the grocery stores i've seen people do a roux where they take the flour and put it on
a sheet pan and bake it in the oven and then mix it with the oil right away and then you're going
to mix in your vegetables so you've got the holy trinity it's celery bell pepper and onion wilt
that down in the room for a while it's really really hot so be careful when you're stirring
of course then a lot of garlic chopped garlic and then your spices fairly simple black pepper
cayenne there's a little bit of a sicilian influence in in some gumbos in new orleans
which is more of a creole gumbo down there and less of a cajun gumbo the difference very broadly
would be that the creole gumbos are generally going to be a little thicker and have tomato
but you get oregano in some of those gumbos down there and that's part of the sicilian
influence on that area of the country and then you put your water in there i've seen people
do a beer in there i think one of the very first gumbos that i ever made in a restaurant was from
a cookbook by emeril lagasse which i'm sure some people think that he invented gumbo but you uh
and you do a beer like a dark beer in there to to start and then your stock or your water
and you just simmer it for a long time two three four hours if you're gonna do a seafood gumbo the
seafood would go in late if you're doing a sausage and chicken or a game of some kind that goes in
early and just goes for a real long time till it's almost falling off the bone when i go to
my wife's family's home they always serve it with a potato salad which you kind of put in the bowl
with the rice which is kind of delicious and there's always hard-boiled eggs in there but
it would be normal just to do it over some really good rice maybe a little bit of like french bread
on the side finished with a little um parsley and scallion i think that's the way to go and it's a
really great dish the way to find out about good gumbos is sometimes not always in cookbooks we
have some here but if you have any connection to anybody down in that part of the country
word of mouth and grandma's recipes are probably the best way to go and that kind of shows itself
even in some of the cookbooks we do have a couple of chef driven cookbooks here but a
lot of it comes from these church cookbooks and southern league local cookbooks like
self-published cookbooks that's kind of where the best recipes are for a lot of these things
but paul prudhomme who's also from um appaloosa which is the town that my wife's family is from
uh really did a great job in terms of making it a popular dish in the um in the early 80s and late
70s you know it's not a hard thing to make you can find recipes online but um i would suggest
going to maybe one of the used bookstores in the area and looking for like i said one of these
like church cookbooks or a self uh published you always know it by the great plastic binder and
really find something that looks interesting and looks like people have been making it for hundreds
of years i think that's the best way to go and uh if you have any questions you're welcome to
write me an email or reach out to me and i'm happy to help you out with any ideas give it a shot
it's a great one for home it's a great one for a crowd especially so hope you all enjoy it thanks
you