Name: Carolina Gumbo
Yield: Makes 6 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2 quarts water; 2 garlic cloves, minced; One 10-ounce package frozen okra, thawed; Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste; 1 quart chicken broth; 2 pounds medium shrimp, shelled and deveined; 4 chicken legs or thighs, boned and patted dry with paper towels; Tabasco sauce to taste; 1 pint shucked fresh oysters, with their liquor; ⅛ teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled; 4 ripe tomatoes, chopped; Boiled white rice, buttered; ½ green bell pepper, seeded and diced; 1 lemon, halved and seeded; 2 onions, diced; 4 slices bacon; 2 bay leaves

Preparation info

Makes
6
servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Glory of Southern Cooking

By James Villas

Published 2007

About

Even most Southerners don’t realize that ever since the days of the great Carolina rice plantations, gumbo has been as popular in the coastal Lowcountry as in Louisiana. The main difference between the two gumbos is that the Carolina version is not based on a roux the way the Creole classic is, and depends exclusively on the okra and long-simmered major ingredients themselves to thicken the soup—an explanation for why the seafood is purposefully overcooked. Most cooks I know around Wilmingt