re: What's wrong with having tomatoes in your gumbo?

That's what I make. It's yummy.

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Every gumbo I've ever had without tomatoes is just meat and roux. Yawn. It's edible but not my preference.

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Well that’s nasty. No stock? No onions, bell pepper or celery?

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Every gumbo I've ever had without tomatoes is just meat and roux.

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So you've eaten gumbos without onions, bell peppers, garlic? What kind of animal would make and serve that?

I put a can of diced tomatoes in every gumbo I make and not once have I had someone push a full bowl back and say “ I can’t eat this, it has tomatoes in it.”

I like them and don’t really care what people might think.

I don't put tomatoes in gumbo. But if a tomato gumbo is what's for dinner I'm tearing it up.

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What's wrong with having tomatoes in your gumbo?

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Not a damn thing, Gumbo is okra stew, add what you wish.

Doesn’t matter. It’s my gumbo.

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I think this is an example of how many people now say "roux" to refer to the entire liquid component of gumbo. Cooks know roux is flour browned in fat (oil or butter), but the term is being corrupted and evolving.

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I attribute that to simply an ignorance of cooking techniques and food in general .Most people don’t think of what goes into making a lot of soups they consume, most of which begin with a roux, be it light or dark prior to stock being added.


As far as tomatoes in gumbo is concerned, I think it’s like jambalaya. It’s heavily influenced by regional and cultural exposure, or what they’ve grown up with. It makes perfect sense to me that the closer you get to New Orleans, the more you will see tomatoes being used in gumbos and jambalayas, as in difference to Lafayette, New Orleans was a major port city and regional market for goods, and so locals had access to lots of different ingredients that Cajuns did not have access or exposure to, and so as time went on you saw Cajun low country cooking evolve to a much more simple cooking not at all unlike most other low country cuisines in the world, and urban areas evolving based on what they had more access to.


Truth be known, fil’e is the one ingredient you see disappearing from gumbos in general. I rarely see people using it anymore and I grew up with fresh sassafras in little mason jars in the kitchen my whole life. I don’t really know why I don’t finish with that anymore, but I don’t.

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But if you served it to me, I'd tell you I can't eat it because of the tomoates. I can't stand tomatoes though.

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Refer to my last sentence in the original post. No worries about me serving you.

No way is wrong. It is the way I cook it, the way I like it and it is what I call it. But a few here would prefer I call it tomato soup with chicken and sausage or seafood tomato soup and I have a sneaking suspicion the majority of those couldn’t even boil water.