California Cajun Gumbo

My dad left Louisiana long ago, never turning back after he left for college. Except for pronouncing the word "cord" as "card" he has lost his accent, but he has carried his Cajun heritage with him in the form of his gumbo. He doesn't make it very often and, as I will explain later, his gumbo is not precisely by-the-book. Rather, it is a subtly innovative and rather excellent version of that famous, heavy, and piquant soup. When I say "California Cajun Gumbo", I mean the gumbo style that my dad, my sister and I make. My sister and I's gumbo has begun to deviate from our dad's, but it is just a lazy/embellished take on his model. More on that later. Here is how to make his gumbo:

3 large yellow onions, diced "the size of a nickel"
3 green bell peppers, diced
4 stalks of celery, diced
1 bunch green onions, finely chopped
2-3 cups (1 bunch or less) parsley, finely chopped
2/3 jar (~1 1/2 cups) Kary's dry roux
1 lb/link of double-smoked Cajun sausage, chopped (half-inch slices)
3-5 lbs chicken thighs
paprika, cayenne, black pepper, salt, flour and vegetable oil

Serve with rice

Fill a stock pot ("gumbo pot") with roughly 2 gallons of water and bring to a boil. Foist vegetable chopping on an underling. While the water is heating, pan fry the onions in a bit of oil until they are golden brown. Add them to the pot. Brown the bell peppers the same way. Once the pot is properly boiling, turn off the heat and mix in the roux. Spend 10 minutes vigorously stirring roux, smushing clumps with the spoon and scraping the bottom of the pot (ideally, using a long metal spoon with a flat tip, or "gumbo spoon"). Turn heat back on and add the peppers and celery to the pot. Boil for 40 minutes, stirring every 5-10 minutes.

While vegetables are boiling, get out the chicken. In a large bowl, pour equal parts salt, paprika (with cayenne to taste) and black pepper (roughly 2-3 Tbsps). Eyeball three parts flour and mix ingredients together. Dredge chicken thighs in this mixture and pan fry once again in oil at high temperature. Pull them out when browned on the outside, they needn't be cooked through.

Add sausages after the vegetables have boiled for 40 minutes. Boil for another 30 minutes. Add browned chicken to the pot and boil for another 30 minutes. Pull out the chicken into a large serving bowl. Skim off fat and season to taste with red pepper, black pepper and salt. Boil the pot for another few minutes and then turn off the heat, immediately stirring in the parsley and green onions at flame out.

Serve in broad bowls, putting the rice and a piece of chicken in first, then pouring the gumbo over. Add pepper vinegar (vinegar soaked in hot peppers), tobasco, and gumbo file to taste. Enjoy!


There are many types of gumbo. The "chicken and sausage gumbo" my father makes is a subtype of the broader meat-and-roux type and is perhaps the most iconic of all Cajun dishes. My dad's version deviates from the most common Louisiana version in the following ways:

-There isn't usually any browning-- none. Dad says it's done for special occasions, like a Christmas gumbo. Frankly, Uncle Pierre seemed pretty baffled by the idea of browning everything-- it's a pain in the ass. He said some Cajuns do it, but it tends to be a family taste thing, not something done on special occasions.
-Sausage is not double-smoked, but rather single-smoked (leaving it more tender and less intense).
-Gumbo is primarily a winter dish-- a hearty soup for cold weather-- so, as my grandmother pointed out, including bell peppers isn't especially authentic to gumbo of 50 years ago, when bell peppers were only available in the summer. Bell peppers are used in Louisiana gumbos sometimes and especially in summer gumbos, but they are not considered characteristic of gumbo.
-Paprika is not used, but rather a local ground red pepper blend. The term "red pepper" is used as shorthand for both sweet and cayenne pepper.

Classic Cajun meat-and-roux gumbo, as it is made in my dad's hometown, is made with: onions, celery-and/or-parsley, smoked pork of some kind (often tasso in addition to smoked sausage), meat from bird or small game (rabbit, for instance), wet or dry roux, often garlic, definitely red pepper, black pepper and salt. It's really a pretty simple, flexible dish, and without the browning step it's not too difficult to make.

Let me return to my dad's recipe-- onions, celery and green bell peppers are the holy trinity of Cajun cuisine and are fundamental to many classic Cajun dishes-- just not gumbo. Bell peppers may be "inessential", but they've always been my favorite part of dad's gumbos, and I can't imagine a Cali gumbo without fresh peppers. The browning step really is a pain in the ass. Though it contributes to a richer and more complex flavor, gumbo made without browning is still excellent. The roux likely contributes the lion's share of browned "Maillard Reaction" flavor in either case. Paprika contributes a certain characteristic bitterness that distinguishes it from Cajun red pepper, it's bitterness complementing the relatively brittle dry roux flavor. My Louisiana family thought the idea of using paprika to be quite interesting, and I think it's an improvement. Dad uses dry roux and double-smoked sausage for ease of transport back to Cali. In Louisiana, wet roux is more authentic (dry roux must be made in an oven, which Cajuns traditionally didn't have) and it is esteemed for its richer flavor, while dry roux is considered to be the "healthy option". I actually prefer dry roux's lighter and perhaps more toasted flavor. It's also easier to make. While Cajuns love tasso and often use it in gumbo, I think we Californians generally think of tasso as second fiddle to sausage and just don't make space for it in our suitcases (after all, it's called "chicken and sausage gumbo", not "chicken and tasso").

Bri and I have been tinkering with our dad's recipe. I've found that single-smoked sausage transports just fine, though I need to use more of it to achieve the same smokiness. I've mostly dispensed with browning, though I've still been browning the onions (browned onions=drool). I'll still dredge the chicken, but I'll be substituting roux for flour so that I'm not skimping on Maillard Reaction goodness (frying breaded chicken essentially makes roux of the flour in Dad's version). I've also started to think about the trinity as a plant-family thing:
Onions- allium genus (garlic, green onions, shallots, leeks, chives)
Peppers- note that even classicist gumbo has a blend of multiple dried red peppers
Celery- umbellifer family (parsley, carrots, parsnips, cilantro, dill, fennel, cumin, lovage, angelica)

Once I thought of the Cajun holy trinity as having multiple participants on each of three "teams", it presented an opportunity to play around. I've switched in poblano (my favorite) and jalapeño peppers for bell peppers in my gumbos. Poblanos have great flavor, but I'm going to add the green bells back for their texture. It also just occurred to me that gumbo would be a great outlet for that smoked paprika I never know what to do with, and for all the interesting dried peppers available in Mexican markets. I've added parsnips to mixed effect-- two large parsnips added fantastic flavor, but introduced a perhaps inappropriate starchy sweetness. I'm going to scale back to just one parsnip. I very tentatively tried adding cilantro. There's a sweet/fenugreek quality to cilantro that worked surprisingly well. It made the gumbo taste vaguely exotic, but still discernibly Cajun. If I run across some lovage or angelica I'll try them for the same reason. They would probably work even better, but are difficult to find. I'll keep my eyes peeled-- I should be able to find dried angelica root in Chinatown. Dill or coriander sound like bad ideas, but caraway or chervil might be interesting. In all, filling out the trinity with Mexican and "northerner" ingredients has been quite rewarding and I hope my Louisiana relatives have some interest in appropriating these experiments or at least find the trinity-as-teamwork paradigm illuminating.

My gumbo has become much more vegetable-forward than Louisianan gumbo (as is only appropriate in this great state). This perhaps, in a bizarre twist of fate, moving it closer towards the "meat to give it flavoring" gumbo of the first half of the 20th century, when meat was considered a luxury.

For fellow Californians looking to make some gumbo, I have some relevant information. Any smoked sausage will work (though obviously it will add its own seasoning to the flavor, so sage-y smoked Italian sausage might be a better idea than cumin-y Mexican). Smoked paprika might also decrease your reliance on foreign sausage for that smoked flavor (who knows, possibly substituting the decreased amount of pork with bacon-grease roux). Wet roux can be made at home, by just pan cooking equal parts oil and flour until milk chocolate brown, all the while stirring like crazy to prevent it from burning (even slight burnage will ruin it). Dry roux can be made in the oven.

Remember, while this may be the most iconic, it is just one of many amazing dishes in the Cajun pantheon. I encourage everyone to check out my distant cousin Paul Prudhomme's most excellent cookbooks as a jumping off point into Cajun cuisine.