Shrimp and Crab Gumbo

Name: Shrimp and Crab Gumbo
Yield: 12 Servings
Cuisine: United States
Ingredients: 2 pounds extremely fresh heads-on shrimp or 1½ pounds headless shrimp; ¼ cup chopped green bell pepper; ½ cup chopped celery; ½ cup chopped onion; 2 fresh jalapeno or other hot peppers; 2 medium onions, peeled and quartered; ½ cup dark roux; 2 carrots, broken into pieces; 2 celery ribs, broken into pieces; 6 vine-ripened tomatoes (about 2 pounds), peeled and chopped, or 1 28-ounce can peeled tomatoes with their juice; 1 tablespoon olive oil; a handful of fresh herbs; 1 gallon water; 12 live crabs; 3 cups long-grain white rice; 1 pound okra, trimmed and cut into ½-inch pieces

Preparation info

12
Servings

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Hoppin John’s Lowcountry Cooking

By John Martin Taylor

Published 1992

About

This is a big, wonderful, messy meal to serve on one of the first cool fall nights, when crab and shrimp are still plentiful but the oysters aren’t yet good. Louisiana may claim gumbo, which is a West African word for okra, but in fact okra, a member of the genus Hibiscus, entered South Carolina with the slave trade long before Louisiana was settled by Europeans. Lowcountry gumbo eschews the filé powder of the Louisiana version.