When I was growing up, my mother made gumbo every week, usually twice—chicken-filé gumbo on Wednesdays and seafood-okra gumbo on Fridays. Her special touch was sautéeing the okra before adding it to the pot, thereby avoiding the texture problems some people have.

The great truth about gumbo is that no two chefs make it alike. Anybody who tells you that there’s only one right way to make gumbo is nuts. A few points about my version: not all recipes for seafood gumbo call for making a stock, but I always do. Usually I buy a package of “gumbo crabs,” little crabs picked of their big lumps but with enough meat to make a good stock. (These are available in every supermarket’s freezer in Louisiana but maybe not elsewhere.) The remnants of big boiled crabs also work, as do shrimp shells or crawfish shells. Or oyster liquor. Use what’s available to make some kind of shellfish stock.

Also, following the technique of many restaurant chefs, I make the roux separately and add it to the broth well into the process, rather than at the start. My mother (and many other mothers) literally think this is crazy. But that’s how chefs almost always do it.
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