Proper Vegan Gumbo (with Okara Andouille Sausage)

The beginnings of what we now know as Gumbo was brought over to New Orleans over two centuries ago on slave ships from Africa. It is now an icon of American Cajun and Creole cuisine. This vegan version is packed full of meaty homemade okara sausage. No beans or any other stuff that doesn’t belong in gumbo!

Gumbo, Take 2

So, the first time I made “gumbo” a year ago, it turns out it wasn’t gumbo at all. Really tragic moment, especially considering I’d actually been to New Orleans and tasted local gumbo three years earlier, but it taught me a great lesson about researching recipes thoroughly before giving them a specific name.

After getting flamed by a brigade of Louisianans, I decided to look into how to make a proper vegan gumbo. Although traditional gumbo is inherently non-vegan, I think you can get pretty close using homemade vegan sausage with the right spices, a rich vegetable stock, and plenty of oil in the roux.

This vegan gumbo recipe was developed with help from Louisiana chef Isaac Toups’ recipe for chicken and sausage gumbo, his video demonstration on Binging with Babish, and the helpful Redditors who roasted me when I posted my first “gumbo” picture. Let’s say this is my attempt at redemption!

The most important things which you must have for a gumbo to be gumbo are:

• “The Holy Trinity” (onion, bell pepper*, celery)
• “The Pope” (garlic)
• Dark roux (a delicious-smelling flour-fried-in-oil concoction)

Trust me, if you omit any of those things, people from New Orleans will find you and kill you, I’m saying this from experience.

*You can substitute the bell pepper with some hot pepper variety, jalapeno, habanero, etc. if you like more heat.

What You’ll Need: Ingredients

A few important notes on some of the ingredients used in this Vegan Gumbo recipe:

Onion, bell pepper, and celery: The holy trinity of gumbo. Similar idea to the European mirepoix. Preferably, use green bell pepper, but I used yellow here because that’s all I had.

Garlic: The “Pope” of gumbo. Aka it would be sacrilegious to leave it out.

Flour and Oil: The first step of cooking gumbo is to make a dark roux, which is all-purpose flour fried in roux until dark and nutty.

Spices: Bay leaves, ground black pepper, and cayenne pepper. You can also add some poultry seasoning if you’d like.

Vegan Sausage: I usually use my homemade okara seitan sausage recipe, flavoured with “Andouille sausage seasoning”. But I’ve also made this gumbo using storebought vegan sausages which work just as well.

Beer: The beer adds a distinctive flavour. Don’t worry, you won’t taste the alcohol in the final dish. Use an amber ale for authentic gumbo—not all are vegan, so check the ingredients label.

Vegetable Stock: I used Better Than Bouillon Seasoned Vegetable Base. If you use homemade or low-sodium stock, you might want to supplement with some extra salt.

Scallions: For topping.

Roux, Okra, or Filé Powder?

Previously, I believed that gumbo had to use either filé powder or okra, in addition to roux, as one of the thickening agents.

But actually, the dark roux is enough on its own.

Although it’s rare to see a gumbo without a roux these days, some old cookbooks don’t bother with roux at all if they use one of the other thickeners.

Historically speaking, okra is the OG thickener because the word “gumbo” itself comes from a West African word for okra. Filé powder, made from grinding up dried sassafras leaves, was a later addition. Sassafras is a tree that is native to North America, and is a mucilaginous vegetable like okra—both have sticky, starchy properties. The Choctaw nation introduced filé as a substitute thickener during months when okra was scarce.

If you’d like, you can add okra or filé or even both to this recipe:

Add a cupful of chopped okra alongside the celery, bell pepper, and onion.

Filé is usually served tableside, for diners to sprinkle into their individual bowls, so leave it to the end and then add to taste.

Personally, I love the extra bit of sliminess that okra brings to this dish, so try it if you can. On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of the flavour of filé. It smells a bit like something between thyme and sage, but more muted. I’ve heard people describe it as “earthy” which is pretty accurate. Add only a little bit at a time because the flavour can get quite strong suddenly.

Fun Facts About Gumbo

• One can eat gumbo with rice, or potato salad, or even cornmeal mush. Or probably other stuff too, but those first two seem to be the crowd favourites.
• It’s not cool to make gumbo on Monday because that day is reserved for red beans and rice.
• There’s a specific Cajun long grain rice that you should use for gumbo. I couldn’t find it over here, so I used jasmine rice.
• Tomatoes are a super contentious topic. I added tomatoes to my not-gumbo and most people went off on me but a healthy minority also insisted tomatoes were fine. It’s a Cajun vs Creole thing.
• Beans never go in gumbo. This, along with lacking an element of the trinity, was the main downfall of my first “attempt” at gumbo.
• It’s rare to see meat and seafood in the same gumbo. There are three main categories of gumbo:
  • Seafood
  • Poultry and sausage (this is the variation that my recipe is based on)
  • Gumbo z’herbes (a very different gumbo made with a lot of veggies for Lent)

If you’d like to learn more about history and politics of gumbo, I recommend reading this interview for a start.

More Vegan Stew Recipes

• Ghormeh Sabzi
• Kerala Ishtew
• Vegan Hutspot