Gumbo

Gumbo is a dark, roux-thickened stew, usually built on shrimp and okra, simmered with the Cajun "holy trinity" of onion, celery and bell pepper and ladled over rice. It's Louisiana's defining dish, and the roux underneath it — flour cooked slowly in fat until it turns from blond to a deep brown — is a technique specific enough to the region that it's hard to find gumbo's exact equivalent anywhere else.

What it really is

Flour and fat cook together low and slow, stirred constantly for anywhere from twenty minutes to well over an hour, until the roux deepens from pale gold to a dark, nutty brown — the colour it reaches is what sets the stew's final depth of flavour, and rushing it burns the flour instead of toasting it. Onion, celery and bell pepper soften into that roux, then stock goes in along with okra, which breaks down as it cooks and thickens the stew further on its own. Shrimp, or sometimes chicken and andouille sausage instead, go in near the end so they don't overcook, and the finished stew ladles over a mound of plain white rice rather than being mixed through it.

Gumbo and jambalaya are not the same dish, despite sharing ingredients. Gumbo is a stew served over rice; jambalaya is rice cooked into the dish itself. Mixing the two up on a menu, or treating one as a variation of the other, misses a distinction Louisiana cooks take seriously.

How it's served

• Ladled over a mound of white rice in a bowl, the rice kept separate rather than stirred in until the guest does it.
• Hot, with hot sauce and filé powder often offered at the table.
• As a main course, filling enough on its own without a side.

How to write it on the menu

• Say what's in it — seafood gumbo and chicken-and-sausage gumbo are both common and genuinely different dishes.
• Flag the crustaceans if shrimp is used and the wheat in the roux.
• Note the roux's colour if it's a point of pride in the kitchen; a dark roux is real work, not a shortcut.