A Family Cooking Class is the Final Test of the Glover Gardens Gumbo Recipe

Gumbo Series Part 4

My cousin and his wife recently moved back to the Houston and requested a family gumbo cooking class at their new home on the day after Thanksgiving.

I was ALL IN. What a great opportunity to use the our Thanksgiving turkey leftovers. And maybe this time, I could finalize, test and post the recipe.

My gumbo series here in the blog has been stalled because I’ve never fully documented my own version (which was based on the great Paul Prudhomme’s) and have been doing it by feel, from memory. I successfully taught my son last winter but that was also done in a tribal knowledge way, without capturing amounts. He learned beautifully and was able to repeat the gumbo successfully himself – but it wasn’t written down.

This time, I vowed to document ahead of time, and use the cooking class opportunity to test the amounts. As a reference, a while ago one, of my close friends found an old email from me about gumbo-making that I had sent her back in 2010, which was really helpful. She’s been making gumbo successfully for her family events for years.

But 2010 was a while ago, and I’ve changed my approach a little and deviated from the Prudhomme recipe quite a bit, instructions-wise (he only recommends a few minutes for the roux, for instance, while I think one should be patient with that most important part of the dish), so I created an updated, final Glover Gardens recipe and took a printout last night to use as a guide. I still went with the tribal knowledge approach, sharing the steps verbally and trying to stay hands-off to enable optimum knowledge transfer.

My ‘students’ on the Friday after Thanksgiving were Colin and Brian. They did a FABULOUS JOB.

Colin posted the results on his Instagram story (below). I was so proud!

The Recipe

The recipe will be posted soon, after adding the Test Kitchen Cooking Class notes. But for now… here’s our shared experience.

Join Us in the Kitchen

Everything was prepped before starting on the roux.

Update: Peruse the Full Series

The recipe has been unveiled, and the Gumbo Series has (finally) come to a close. Here it is, in 5 parts:

• Gumbo Series, Part 1: Good Gumbos are Like Sunsets
• Gumbo Series, Part 2: Gumbo, It’s a Family Affair
• Gumbo Series, Part 3: The Communal Nature of Gumbo-Making
• Gumbo Series, Part 4: A Family Cooking Class is the Final Test of the Glover Gardens Gumbo Recipe
• Gumbo Series, Part 5: The Glover Gardens Chicken and Sausage Gumbo Recipe – Finally!

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