Louisiana Creole cuisine (, , ) is a style of cooking originating in Louisiana, United States, which blends West African, French, Spanish, and Native American influences,Beggs, Cindy; Gipson, Bridget; Shaw, Sherrie."Cajun and Creole Cuisine", University of West Florida. Archived from the original on April 29, 2001. Retrieved December 13, 2015John D. Folse https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/547717.The_Encyclopedia_of_Cajun_Creole_Cuisine as well as influences from the general cuisine of the Southern United States.
Creole cuisine revolves around influences found in Louisiana from populations present there before its sale to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
The term Creole describes the population of people in French colonial Louisiana which consisted of the descendants of the French and Spanish, and over the years the term grew to include Acadians, Germans, Caribbeans and native-born slaves of African descent as well as those of mixed racial ancestry.
Creole food is a blend of the various cultures that found their way to Louisiana including French, Spanish, Acadian, Caribbean, West African, German and Native American, among others.
History
The Picayune Creole Cook Book has been described as "an authentic and complete account of the Creole kitchen". It was published in 1900 during a time when formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants were moving North. Local newspapers warned that when the last of the "race of Creole cooks" left New Orleans "the secrets of the Louisiana Kitchen" would be lost.
The recipes published in the cookbook were compiled by an unknown staffer at the Daily Picayune, who said the recipes came directly from "the old Creole 'mammies'". Since its initial publication it has been released in 16 subsequent editions with few alterations to the original recipes.
Both Creole and Cajun cuisine draw from French cooking traditions adapted to Louisiana's resources and influences; however, Creole cuisine is stereotypically considered more "city food" while Cajun cuisine is considered simpler "country food".
Classic Creole dishes
Appetizers
Oysters Bienville Oysters en brochette Oysters Rockefeller Shrimp remoulade
Soups
Bisque Gumbo Turtle soup
Main dishes Chicken creole Crawfish étouffée Creole baked chicken Creole chicken fricassée Grillades Gumbo Jambalaya Mirliton Pompano en papillote Red beans and rice Rice and gravy Shrimp bisque Shrimp creole Smothered pork chops Trout a la meunière
Side dishes Dirty rice Red beans Smothered green beans with sausage and potatoes
Desserts Sugar first arrived in Louisiana from Saint-Domingue in the mid-1700s. Sugarcane could be chewed plain, and it was not until 1795 that Etienne de Boré mastered the process of crystallizing sugar at his plantation (present-day Audubon Park) in New Orleans.
Sugar began to replace cotton as the local cash crop and by 1840 the state was home to over 1,500 sugar mills and by 1860 over 300,000 slaves worked in various aspects of sugar production. Slave labor was needed not only in the fields, but also supported agricultural activities in other skilled roles like carpentry and metalworking. Louisiana accounted for around 90% of all national sugar production in the antebellum era.
Creole cuisine is known for desserts like king cake, pralines, and sweet dough pie. Regional desserts feature local fruits and nuts, such as berries, figs and pecans. In the early 20th century cane syrup became a staple ingredient, and is used in recipes for pecan pie, gingerbread, spice cookies, and gateau de sirop, or served plain with pancakes or hot buttermilk biscuits, similar to maple syrup in the cuisine of New England.
Banana pudding Bananas Foster Beignets Doberge cake
Beverages Café Brûlot Café au lait Chicory coffee Ramos gin fizz Sazerac cocktail Vieux Carré Brandy milk punch
Breakfast Calas Eggs Sardou Grits and grillades French toast (, or "lost bread") Beignet
Condiments Creole cream cheese Pepper jelly Remoulade Creole mustard Blue Plate Mayonnaise
Creole cooking methods Barbecuing—similar to "slow and low" Southern barbecue traditions, but with Creole seasoning. Baking—direct and indirect dry heat in a furnace or oven, faster than smoking but slower than grilling. Grilling—direct heat on a shallow surface, fastest of all variants; sub-variants include: Charbroiling—direct dry heat on a solid surface with wide raised ridges. Gridironing—direct dry heat on a solid or hollow surface with narrow raised ridges. Griddling—direct dry or moist heat along with the use of oils and butter on a flat surface. Braising—combining a direct dry-heat charbroil grill or gridiron grill with a pot filled with broth for direct moist heat, faster than smoking but slower than regular grilling and baking; time starts fast, slows down, then speeds up again to finish. Boiling—as in boiling of crabs, crawfish, or shrimp, in seasoned liquid. Deep frying Smothering—cooking a vegetable or meat with low heat and small amounts of water or stock, similar to braising. Étouffée is a popular variant done with crawfish or shrimp. Pan-broiling or pan-frying. Injecting—using a large syringe-type setup to place seasoning deep inside large cuts of meat. This technique is much newer than the others on this list, but very common in Creole cooking. Stewing, also known as .
Deep-frying of turkeys or oven-roasted turduckens entered southern Louisiana cuisine more recently.
Ingredients The following is a partial list of ingredients used in Creole cuisine and some of the staple ingredients.
Grains Corn Rice—long, medium, or short grain white Rice proved to be a valuable commodity in Creole cuisine. With an abundance of water and a hot, humid climate, rice could be grown practically anywhere in the region and grew wild in some areas. Rice became the predominant starch in the diet, as it was easy to grow, store and prepare. The oldest rice mill in operation in the United States, the Conrad Rice Mill, is located in New Iberia. Recently, LSU has released two types of "high-yielding, conventional" rice from their agricultural center. Wheat (for baking bread)
Fruits and vegetables
Bell peppers Blackberries Cayenne peppers Celery Collard greens Cucumbers Figs Limes Lemons Mirlitons (also called chayotes or vegetable pears) Muscadines Okra Onions Satsuma oranges Scallions (also known as green onions or onion tops) Squash Strawberries Sweet potatoes Tabasco pepper Tomatoes
Meat and seafood Creole folkways include many techniques for preserving meat, some of which are waning due to the availability of refrigeration and mass-produced meat at the grocer. Smoking of meats remains a fairly common practice, but once-common preparations such as turkey or duck confit (preserved in poultry fat, with spices) are now seen even by Acadians as quaint rarities.
Game is still uniformly popular in Creole cooking.
The recent increase of catfish farming in the Mississippi Delta has increased its usage in Creole cuisine, replacing the more traditional wild-caught trout (the saltwater species) and red fish. Seafood Freshwater Bass—commonly known as green trout in south Louisiana Catfish Sac-au-Lait—white perch or crappie Yellow perch Saltwater or brackish water species Trout Redfish Pompano Drumfish Flounder Grouper Perch—many varieties Snapper—many varieties Shellfish Crawfish () – either wild swamp or farm-raised Shrimp, or ( in Colonial Louisiana French) Oysters Blue crab Also included in the seafood mix are some so-called trash fish that would not sell at market because of their high bone to meat ratio or required complicated cooking methods. These were brought home by fishermen to feed the family. Examples are garfish, black drum also called or just goo, croaker, and bream.
Poultry Farm-raised Turkey (and turkey confit) Chicken (and Guinea hen) Game birds Dove Goose Quail Duck (and duck confit)Pork Andouille—a spicy dry-smoked sausage, characterized by a coarse-ground texture —similar to the Spanish chorizo Ham hocks Wild boar or feral hog Head cheese New Orleans hot sausage—a (usually) pork sausage spiced with cayenne and paprika. Pork sausage (fresh)—not smoked or cured, but highly seasoned. Mostly used in gumbos. The sausage itself does not include rice, separating it from boudin. Salt pork Cracklin'—tender pork rinds Chicharron—Boiled skin which breaks the cells of collagen. Fat is scraped off and pieces are dehydrated. Deep fried for a "puffy" consistency. Gratons—Skin on pork belly, cured similarly to bacon for up to a week, cooked in its own fat and dehydrated. Deep fried until tender.
Beef and dairy Though parts of the Louisiana where Creole cooking is found are well suited to cattle or dairy farming, beef is not often used in a pre-processed or uniquely Creole form. It is usually prepared fairly simply as chops, stews, or steaks, taking a cue from Texas to the west. Ground beef is used as is traditional throughout the southern US, although seasoned differently.
Dairy farming is not as prevalent as in the past, but there are still some farms in the business. There are unique dairy items produced in Creole cooking such as Creole cream cheese.
Other game meats Alligator Alligator gar, or gator gar Frog, usually bullfrogs (not just the legs, but the entire creature) Gros bec—commonly called night heron Nutria Squirrel Rabbit Skunk, or mouffette Turtle Snake Virginia opossum, or sarigue
Creole seasonings Individual
Bay leaf Oregano Black pepper Cayenne pepper Garlic Green onion "Holy trinity" — bell pepper (green or red), onion, and celery used together Parsley, flat leaf Sassafras leaves—dried and ground into the spice known as filé for gumbo of the Choctaw Dried shrimp Sugarcane, also cane syrup, brown sugar and molasses Thyme
Blended "Creole spice" blends such as Tony Chachere's and REX King of Spice are sometimes used in Creole kitchens, but do not suit every cook's style because Creole-style seasoning is often achieved from scratch, even by taste. Whole peppers are almost never used in authentic Creole dishes—ground cayenne, paprika, and pepper sauces predominate. Hot sauce Seafood boil mix Vinegar seasoned with small, pickled, hot green peppers is a common condiment with many Creole meals. Persillade Marinades made with olive oil, brown sugar, and citrus juices Various barbecue rubs similar to those in other states
Cooking bases
Knowing how to make a good roux is key to Cajun and Creole cooking. The technique was inherited from the French. A roux is "a mixture made from equal parts of fat and flour, used especially to make a sauce or soup thicker." The fat and flour are cooked together on the stovetop until the mixture reaches a certain level of brownness, or darkness.
Creole roux in New Orleans are known to be lighter than Cajun roux and are usually made with butter or bacon fat and flour. But certain Creole dishes use a dark roux.
Dark roux are usually made with oil or bacon fat and flour. The scent of a good roux is so strong that it stays in clothes until they are washed. The scent is so widely recognized in Louisiana that others can tell if someone is making a roux, and often infer that they're making a gumbo.
The secret to making a good gumbo is pairing the roux with the protein, similar to pairing the right wine and protein.
Light roux: A light roux is well-suited for seafood dishes, because the roux will not overwhelm the subtle seafood flavors. A light-colored roux does not support the heavier meat flavor of meat-based gumbos. For a light roux, the flour is cooked to a light golden brown. Medium roux: Medium roux are the most versatile and probably the most common among the Creole cuisine of the New Orleans area. They work well with most Creole dishes. A medium roux will turn the color of a copper penny or peanut butter. A medium roux begins to take on the warm, browned flavor widely associated with gumbo.