I have lived in Louisiana my whole life. Louisiana dishes have not only been part of my life, but it is also ingrained in our culture. Red beans, etoufee and jambalaya are just a few of the well-known dishes, but I find gumbo more interesting.
If you’re not from Louisiana, gumbo is a very popular dish in this state. Every family that you’ll meet makes gumbo in its own way. Gumbo is basically a soup where you can add either meat or seafood with other ingredients. The base of the gumbo is called a roux, and people will usually add rice to the dish.
Gumbo has French influences and also has origins from West Africans who were forcefully brought here through slavery, and the Choctaw tribe. There are three different cultures in this dish, and it has been continuously made for hundreds of years.
Everyone’s gumbo tastes different. This may be obvious, but I thought about how different we are when it comes to making gumbo. We all put the gigantic pot on the stove when the temperature goes down a bit, but we are different when it comes to making the base and adding ingredients.
I wanted to dive into this myself and see if everyone’s gumbo recipes have some differences or similarities when it comes to class, race, region and environment. It’s a great way to learn more about each other through food because gumbo is a warm, hearty dish that brings family and friends together.
The sample I used isn’t a big one. I will be discussing the samples that answered my survey, so their experiences and background may or may not match yours. We all live differently, but we also have similarities.
So, let’s get down to the data.
I received 74 responses, and I asked questions about the responders’ race, class, religion, household and how their family makes gumbo.
From what I found from middle and working class Christian families in the southwest, both liberal and conservative households prefer meat in their gumbo that includes mainly chicken and sausage. They also like to add the trinity mix, which consists of onions, bell peppers and celery. These families also like to make their gumbo base from scratch.
The same can be said for middle and working class residents who live in the southeast and central regions. Although, there was one difference from some southeast respondents where they used a scoop of potato salad as a substitute for rice.
From the results of my survey it seems that Louisiania natives in general make gumbo the same way. Although, I did find many differences that I haven’t seen before where some families would add a hard boiled egg, beef tips, corn, beer, mushrooms or gizzards. On paper, it doesn’t look different, but I know they all taste different. If there’s a way for me to taste test everyone’s gumbo, sign me up.
I can learn from this experience and be more precise when collecting responses from a survey, but I did expect that through different backgrounds we will have some similarities with our recipes.
It was fun and interesting to learn about people’s recipes because I truly believe that we can know someone’s life through their cooking. We must ask why people add certain meats or seafoods. Why do others prefer roux from the jar or from scratch? There are still a lot of questions that need to be asked.
It’s a good reminder that we can be drastically different from each other, but we should come together from our similarities. But, we must also try to learn each other’s differences.