CMU's Recipe Archive

Dirty rice is dirty rice because it originated in slave kitchens and was a cheap and efficient way to make use of offal. It gets its color from liver and is traditionally made by browning chopped lizards and gizzards along with the trinity and mixing in rice with a bit of stock. That recipe probably tastes fine... some palates probably would have an issue with the little bits of liver, even though I find them essential to the spirit of the dish. I do love Dawn's mushroom steak sauce, and usually sautee some sliced onions with mushrooms and add that to a pan before tossing in some shaved roast beef and using the mixture for po-boys.

Only masochists prepare gumbo roux the way they describe in the recipe. It's much easier to get a nice, heavy cast iron skillet and heat the oil over high heat, stirring vigorously for 10 minutes, than it is standing there for 45 minutes to an hour over low heat. Sift the flour into the oil as the pan heats up so that you don't have any clumps and stir EVERYTHING. When your roux gets dark enough, add your veggies and set the heat to medium. The vegetables will stop the roux from continuing to darken and brown.

Red beans and rice should be cooked slowly with some sort of smoked pork, like ham hocks. You're slowly infusing the beans with all the flavors from the pork. With gumbo or red beans, you don't add sausage or other meats you intend to eat until the very end so that you don't boil all of the fat and flavor out of the item (or in the case of seafood gumbo, you don't want to dry it out).

The "Cajun shrimp" recipe isn't cajun at all. It's scampi with beer.

(see https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/FOOD/MainPage.html for some context)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/13/the-great-esca...