What Makes a Great Gumbo?

A trip to discover the story of—and the 'best' recipe for—New Orleans' most iconic dish

Key elements of gumbo come from many sources, making it a common metaphor for the blending of cultures in New Orleans. Aimee Lee Studios/Shutterstock

I gathered with a small group in a back room at SoBou, a Creole restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Each of us had a little cup of a deep brown stew with pieces of chicken and sausage rising above the surface and a small scoop of potato salad in the middle. This was the first stop on a food history walking tour with Doctor Gumbo Tours.

We tucked right in as our guide Beth Kennedy spoke (“You never have to wait to eat on our tours,” she told us), giving us a quick but comprehensive historical background on the Crescent City before introducing us to our first dish: gumbo.

“Gumbo uses the three main tenets of French cooking: the roux, the trinity, and stock,” she said. Wait, what was that middle part?

The French would call it mirepoix, an aromatic vegetable mix of diced onions, celery, and carrots, back in the Old World. But because rainy, high-water-table New Orleans isn’t especially good terrain for growing root vegetables, cooks here swapped the carrots for green bell peppers and it became known as the “Holy Trinity.” She said, “And you can’t have a trinity without a pope, and the pope is garlic.”

But at the root of it all is the roux, a flavorful thickener made with fat and flour in a skillet. “You can use butter, you can use bacon grease. Today it’s canola oil,” Kennedy said. “When you first start to mix that, it just looks like wet sand.” But it stirs easier with the heat. “That heat helps the color to develop. ... Blonde gives way to peanut butter, peanut butter goes to chocolate, chocolate goes to brick.” And that’s where you want to land this. “After brick, it goes to burnt, which goes to the trash.”

This particular gumbo was made with chicken and andouille, a coarse-grained combination of pork shoulder and pork butt, seasoned with garlic and double-smoked over pecan wood.

Later that night, still not even hungry after the food tour, I had a fantastic seafood gumbo at Drago’s with shrimp, oysters, and crab meat, and a few spoonfuls of rice on top. My server told me he also loved to add andouille to his seafood gumbo. Boundaries were being crossed, I thought. Gumbo ranks up there with chili or paella as an iconic dish, so it must have some hard fast rules about what qualifies as “true” gumbo. Not exactly.

Depending on the region and the cook, gumbo may be served over a mound of rice—or potato salad. Holly Rae Garcia/Shutterstock

Gumbo Expressionism

There are both seafood and chicken-and-sausage versions of gumbo on the menus of many restaurants, and the occasional daring combination of the two—but the truth is, one can rattle off gumbos the way Bubba from Forrest Gump could list methods of shrimp preparation.

Filé gumbo (that’s fee-lay, powdered dried sassafras leaves), Creole gumbo, Cajun gumbo, chicken and crab gumbo, vegetarian gumbo, gumbo with duck, turkey, snapping turtle, alligator or even nutria, a regional semi-aquatic rodent. There’s also a gumbo made with greens: gumbo z'herbes. Still, most everyone will tell you exactly what the best recipe is.

I spoke with chef Dee Lavigne of Deelightful Roux School of Cooking, who offers cooking classes on various Creole and Cajun dishes, including gumbo. “I like to look at gumbo as a cultural-social dish,” she told me, “because even here in New Orleans, depending on where you grew up, you could potentially have different gumbo in the same city. Gumbo is something passed down through families, generation to generation. It can always be something different.” She wasn’t kidding: In my research I came across an article where listeners of Lafayette’s KPEL radio shared some of their secret ingredients—from canned tomatoes or fish sauce to chicken beaks or hog lard.

How did this dish ever come to be?

A Melting Pot

Key elements of this dish we singularly call gumbo come from many sources, making it a common metaphor for the blending of cultures in New Orleans.

Native Americans occupied the area first. Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto actually died of fever along the banks of the Mississippi, but the city itself was founded by the French in 1718. The Spanish acquired control from France in 1762, and rebuilt what is now the French Quarter after a couple of big fires devastated it. And after a brief return to French control—we’re talking three weeks here—the city became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in December 1803.

But gumbo is a New World dish with some Old World influences. The roux is a very French element. Slaves, arriving in what was the largest slave market in the United States, brought okra seeds from West Africa as well as rice and the knowledge to cultivate it. In fact, okra is “ki ngombo” in one of the Bantu dialects and is considered the origin of the okra-thickened Creole dish and the word gumbo.

The Native Choctaws introduced filé powder, which also can thicken gumbo but now is often added only at the very end for flavor. The smoked-pork andouille has a French origin to it, credited to the Cajuns, a name derived from Acadians, the descendants of the 17th- and 18th-century French settlers in the northeastern maritime regions of North America.

Gumbo is served in a bowl, like soup, though its consistency ranges from thick soup to chunky stew. A couple spoonfuls of rice come on top, but a traditional Cajun gumbo often comes with ... a scoop of potato salad at the center? Sure enough, in the early 1700s, German immigrants had begun settling in and around New Orleans and eventually dropped their contribution into the mix, perhaps with a bit of spicy-tangy Cajun mustard in its making. There are some who may even favor both, and a bit of online digging found a call for sweet potato—which grows in Louisiana, by the way.

Some will claim that if there’s no okra, there’s no gumbo. Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock

Okra or No-kra?

Some will claim that if there’s no okra, there’s no gumbo. I’ve seen recipes without it and had it okra-free at some restaurants—although it seems to me seafood gumbo takes that okra assertion most seriously. Chef Dee’s opinion: “Don’t add anything you don’t want to eat. My husband hates okra,” she said with a laugh. “Doesn’t matter how it’s cooked. He doesn’t like the mouthfeel of it. He doesn’t like the texture; he doesn’t like the smell.”

“When these dishes were created, they were done out of necessity, and none of this was done for show. If my grandmother came today and made gumbo for me, it’s not going to be any less gumbo because she didn’t have chicken, or she didn’t have shrimp, or she didn’t have crab, or she didn’t have okra.”

That said, Chef Dee points out that Cajun gumbo recipes are typically only thickened with roux made with oil (or even lard), so if you do opt for okra, bake or roast it separately first and add it at the end. On the other hand, Creole versions—made with a seafood stock base, most likely crab—use okra in addition to the roux, often butter-based, for thickening. “For the regular Creole gumbo, add it with the proteins. Allow the slimy texture to come out and cook down,” she instructed. You don’t want crunchy texture or the fresh green taste in this case. The okra should cook until soft, but not so long that the pieces disintegrate and lose their shape.

At the root of gumbo is the roux, a flavorful thickener made with fat and flour. Karpenkov Denis/Shutterstock

Patience and Anticipation

So is there a secret to making great gumbo?

“Gumbo is supposed to be a long stew kind of recipe. It’s not really something you should rush,” said Chef Dee. “It’s really supposed to be done over a period of time that allows all of your flavors to come through, all the different components of it to actually shine. Take your time. ... And don’t add anything you don’t want to eat!”

Fun Fact

The “Gumbo Capital of the World,” Bridge City, Louisiana, lies across the river from New Orleans. Since 1973, they’ve hosted a Gumbo Festival each October, serving up over 2,000 gallons of both seafood and chicken and sausage gumbos.

RECIPE: Chicken and Andouille Gumbo

Cajun dry spice blends are available on the market. If you are making your own, it will require salt, garlic powder, paprika (try smoked paprika instead), black pepper, onion powder, cayenne pepper, oregano, and thyme.

This recipe serves 8 and only gets better as leftovers.

Makes 2 quarts

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 cup diced onion
• 1 cup diced bell pepper
• 1 cup diced celery
• 1/4 cup minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 2 quarts unsalted chicken stock
• 8 ounces Andouille sausage
• 8 ounces chicken thigh meat
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• Crystal Hot Sauce (or other Louisiana brand) to taste
• Cajun seasoning blend (see note above) to taste

In a cast-iron Dutch oven, create the roux by whisking the oil and flour together completely. If cooking on the stovetop, stir continuously over medium heat until roux takes on the color of melted chocolate or brick. This can take more than a half-hour. Do not let it scorch; be watchful of black flecks, which will indicate burning. An alternative is to place the pot in the oven at 375 degrees F for up to 4 hours, stirring every 30 minutes until you get that darkened color.

Add the Holy Trinity (onion, bell pepper, and celery) to the roux and heat on medium-high for about 4 to 5 minutes, until the onions become soft. Add the garlic and thyme and cook for about 1 minute, until fragrant. Add chicken stock a cup or two at a time, whisking it into the roux until smooth, then add the rest of the stock. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the andouille into quarter-inch thick slices or half-inch cubes and fry in a separate pan until browned. Remove the andouille and place it in a bowl. Season the chicken pieces with Cajun spices, then fry in the fat from the sausage until lightly browned, but not necessarily cooked all the way through. Add more oil if necessary here. Keep the chicken with the sausage until ready to use.

After 20 minutes of simmering the gumbo base, add the chicken, sausage, and Worcestershire sauce to the pot and continue to simmer for another 20 minutes. Adjust seasoning with Crystal Hot Sauce and Cajun seasoning as desired. Serve hot with rice or warm potato salad.

Recipe adapted from Doctor Gumbo Tours