Potato Salad in Gumbo

A reader asked in a comment about serving potato salad in or with gumbo.

My parents were not cajuns. They moved to southwest Louisiana when I was 5 and they never really changed the way they ate. When I was growing up, the biggest part of people in the area where we lived had cajun family so they all ate way different than we did. As a young girl, I remember most of my friends’ moms made food that I had no idea what we were eating.

I worked for two different law firms in Lake Charles and both of them were big on having big meals served often. Both had big kitchens. The last attorney I worked for was also a rice farmer and he was always having someone come in and cook a meal – often it happened once a week.

Before Vince and I got married, he would come to visit me and he always wanted to go to cajun restaurants. The people around here probably would think I cook weird stuff but the people in Louisiana probably would not think I cook like a cajun.

But, we do love our gumbo. Friday night and Saturday night, our lows are in the 40’s and our high each day is 70. That’s cool enough for me to call it gumbo weather so I’m making gumbo tomorrow.

I had always only had rice in gumbo but my niece married a really cajun guy with a really cajun family and they wouldn’t think of having a bowl of gumbo without a scoop of potato salad in it. That was the first time I’d ever heard of putting potato salad in gumbo. My niece now has two kids who are out of college so she’s been married probably 25 years or more. Since I first saw them putting potato salad in gumbo, I’ve seen it more and more and from what I’ve seen, it’s probably more common to see it in gumbo than to not see it in gumbo. At first, I didn’t like it but now I do. It still seems wrong to have rice and potatoes at the same time but . . sometimes, if it’s wrong, I don’t want to be right! 🙂

So, the potato salad is made. Tomorrow I’ll make the gumbo and Friday, we’ll have gumbo for dinner!

I found this cute little article online about potato salad and gumbo. You may find it interesting.