The History of Gumbo in New Orleans
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Subtitles: Jose Mendoza | IG @worldagainstjose
PHOTO CREDITS
Okra Cross Section – By Prathyush Thomas – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40766980
Okra Growing – By Earth100 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20903977
Sassafras leaves – By Randy Everette – Imported from 500px (archived version) by the Archive Team. (detail page), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71262709
#tastinghistory #gumbo
37 Comments
Just an update that I’ve arrived in Cairo, Egypt. If you want to follow along on this trip, I’m posting constantly on Instagram and Facebook. Getting ideas for lots of videos which I’ll post on YouTube in the coming months!
I had gumbo with gator while in Louisiana, and it was very good. Other variations also but never with beef.
Imagine inviting someone over just to show em your celery
All i know about Gumbo I learned from Joseph Sisko ( Star Trek Deep Sapce Nine)
I highly recommend exploring the Cajun side of Gumbo in another video. Some people, like my family in Terrebonne Parish, make our gumbo with no thickeners during cooking, and only add file' at the end. This was how I grew up eating chicken/sausage gumbo:
Brown sausage to render out fat, remove from pan. Add a ton of onions, stew them down for 30+ minutes (kind of like french onion soup). Then add celery and bell pepper, cook until soft, then add garlic, green onion, 30 second stir, add raw chicken and sausage back in. Smother this down until tender with seasoning. The vegetables should essentially become a gravy, if it starts burning, add a little stock or water to deglaze. Once stewed down proper, add the stock or water in to cover, and simmer as long as you like (at least 30 minutes). I like to cold shock my gumbo after simmering with a cup of ice cold water, then sprinkle file onto it when serving.
My mother would say a roux is for a stew, and that was why it rhymes lol.
There is also a good recipe in the Mosquito Supper Club cookbook. People in the deep south of Louisiana have made this type of gumbo since the 1700s when the Acadians arrived and met the natives in Spanish Louisiana.
Celery episode please!
have you ever done an episode on Kentucky Burgoo? I have a cookbook from the "Southern Cookbook 250 Fine Old Recipes" Claire S. Davidow – Ann Goodman -1972 with a hilarious recipe for it.
This recipe is credited in the book as coming from "A handwritten copy by Mr. J.T. Looney, of Lexington, KY." a famous Burgoo maker.
600 lbs lean soup meat (no fat, no bones)
200lbs fat hens
2000lbs potatoes, peeled and diced (yes that is two thousand pounds… I said this recipe was hilarious)
200lbs onions
5 bushels cabbage, chopped
60 ten pound cans of tomatoes
24 ten pound cans puree of tomato
24 ten pound cans carrots
18 ten pound cans of corn
red pepper and salt to taste (?!?)
Season with worchestershire sauce, tobasco, or steak sauce
Mix the ingredients, a little at a time, and cook outdoors in huge iron kettles (plural) over wood fires from 15 to 20 hours. Use squirrels in season… one dozen squirrels to each 100 gallons.
"Burgoo is literally a soup composed of many vegetables and meats delecatably fused together in an enoumous caldron, over which, at the exact moment, a rabbit's foot at the end of a yarn string is properly waved by a preacher, whose salary has been paid to date. These are the good omens by which he burgoo is fortified
-Carey's Dictionary of Double Derivations
Yes! I would absolutely love an explanation of the celery thing! Please?
So frekkin hearty
That Mary Randolph was related to the Custis family, Martha Custis who married George Washington, her second husband. Her first husband owned what’s now know as Arlington Cemetery, and she is buried on the property, the 1st burial to be placed there. Interesting that you picked her recipe, being a history bug. You lucked out.
Steak gumbo yeah, hey Yankee boy I got a bridge for sale….
Try Conecuh Sausage in Gumbo
Cajun from Louisiana here and brown flour is wild. Never seen it made this way before. Really interesting video!
2:30 Max, I love your work but that knife work sucks. You just threw away four solid bites of okra. Cut at the seam, no buffer zone required.
I love okra. I want all of it.
Also, frying it naked in oil and pepper kills the slime like nothing else. That's the only way I do it outside of gumbo
I'd like to hear about the history of celery! 😊 Have fun in Egypt. I've been there and did not enjoy it but I do remember eating something delicious called fateer which was very buttery and had spinach on it. Then folded over and eaten. It was cooked on a hot stone.
23:38 what's that I hear. Fancy pants showing through
best jambalaya recipe I ever made, the guy in the video said to cook the roux until it was the same color as he was.
Say it with me now:
New AWR-linz.
Not New or-LEENS.
There, I've done my civic duty for today.
I do give you extra points for knowing that we say gumbo is neither a soup or a stew, its just gumbo lol.
Check out Madame Langlois and the origins of French colonial Gumbo (Mobile, AL)
The entire Gulf Coast is like New Orleans. When you say Louisiana, people do not know that they are referring to Louisiana the colony not the state. There is a lot of history that I think you'd be interested in from thia area.
YES PLEASE I WANT TO HEAR ALL ABOUT THE CELERY THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Back to watching the rest of the video now xxx
Patrick Hearne is my ancestor! I didn't know any of this… How lovely
my dad's side of the family is cajun/Acadian, and I've eaten a lot of gumbo. you said it doesn't need the rice, and on a lot of levels for flavoring and quality of the food, you're right. but, gumbo is an expansion meal. the rice expands the meal so it's less expensive to make, it's an integral part of gumbo.
my husband isn't cajun, but he pointed out that cooking the seafood to rubberiness may have been legit, since it would help you feel more full than the softly cooked seafood we do today.
that said, I love this episode, and got me curious to know more. my uncle knew a lot of the family history from way back, and passed down a recipe for Acadian BBQ sauce, which is unlike anything I've ever gotten from a restaurant. I wish I could ask him some more questions about the Acadians now, but he's passed. I may see what my dad knows.
Ok, now we truly need a colab video with you and Stalekracker. It would be gold.
Growing up in Texas, my grandmother would make gumbo when we visited the coast near Corpus Christi. She made the beef base and used shrimp and some of whatever fish we had caught. Also blue crab which was already picked from the shell. Of course it had okra and there was always a bottle of the gumbo file(sassafras). I was a little surprised that blue crab was not used in this instructional video.
I love the detail of the background! Great video as always!
Max! My wife and I are long time fans! Watching your great videos have become a weekly ritual, but please don't leave all that meat in your shrimp tails!
I am curious about how the "holy trinity" came to be.
Regarding the etymology of gumbo, my bet is a little bit of A, a little bit of B. The melding of oppressed indigenous and enslaved peoples.
Side note… Just an FYI for the folks that want to up their cooking game
Celery is a "secret" vegetable GOOD chefs(I'm alright…)use to their advantage. It can have many uses to provide texture, moisture, and aroma. The trick is to peel the stringy bits, then you can utilize it in more applications. Also, the leafy tops have a unique bitterness that is great in salads and as an herb to finish soups. I use it to finish my minestrone
5:21 Rachel Ray would call it a stoup… cross between a stew and a soup.
1:58 Okra in Malay we call it "Kacang Bendi", in Brunei, we call it as "Kacang Bindir". We usually cook this with Oyster or just stir-fry only with onion, chillies and garlic
GIVE US THE CELERY VID I LOVE YOU
Oven for roux??!! Oh hell no….
😂
Get yourself a cast iron skillet….then select your preferred oil or butter….then stir it like a ritual to please your dead grandmothers.
Peanut butter?? No!
We start looking at the color as a “brown paper bag”….how dark you need?
You think snobs was a word to describe rich people?
It’s to describe Cajuns who watch gumbo recipe videos…
The two main styles thing is ahistorical bunk for tourists.
We made gumbo with whatever you had on hand. Poor enough and you'd have green gumbo with herbs and no meat for example.
I don't know which sausage goes in gumbo, but Bratwurst in Jambalaya is frikken' amazing.
Supakandia. Okra soup from West Africa. Its really good.
I've never had gumbo that wasn't slimy, and I'm amazed you unlocked the secret and it was in an old recipe all along.