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Sep 21, 2023

The Flaky Biscuit: How to Make Dorion Renaud’s Okra

Every item on this page was chosen by a Shondaland editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Shondaland podcast host and artisan baker Bryan Ford transports skincare maven

Every item on this page was chosen by a Shondaland editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Shondaland podcast host and artisan baker Bryan Ford transports skincare maven Dorion Renaud back home with a Southern gumbo.

On the Shondaland Audio podcast The Flaky Biscuit, artisan baker Bryan Ford is cooking up morsels of nostalgia. From vending-machine classics to holiday staples, he’s re-creating dishes from his guests’ pasts in the hope of triggering joy-inducing memories today. In this week’s installment, Ford tackles gumbo.

“Chicken, sausage, and okra over rice is very important to me because that’s the first thing I ask my mom to make for me when I go home,” shares Dorion Renaud in a voice as rich and silken as the skincare line he founded, Buttah Skin. “And I don’t eat okra any other time.”

Renaud’s association with the dish is crystalline. “It just reminds me of the childhood house that I grew up in. I would sit in the kitchen when my mom was cooking, listening to music and talking. That was our social time, so that’s what it reminds me of: connecting with my mom and family. It’s my go-to when I go back to Beaumont, Texas.”

Renaud asked The Flaky Biscuit host and baker Bryan Ford, who grew up in New Orleans, to whip up Renaud’s sacred meal, and the baker started by taking his cue from that triune of chicken-sausage-okra.

“As someone from New Orleans, I made a gumbo,” Ford declares. “I made a roux with some freshly milled farm-ground flour. A little butter, a little oil, seared the chicken, seared the sausage. Put it to the side; added bell pepper, onion, celery. Sweat that a bit; add it to the roux. Added my chicken stock, some seasoning, the chicken, the okra.”

Distilling one of Creole cuisine’s most emblematic, beloved dishes into five pithy sentences is no easy feat. While the instructions sound elementary, there is far more to gumbo than meets the eye.

Gumbo is an exercise in patience, with each stage requiring time and restraint — the chicken yearns to be tender, the roux requires pampering before turning fragrantly nutty, and the okra pods must be allowed to excrete their viscous mucilage without turning limp.

A gumbo is not a gumbo without roux, the marriage of equal parts flour and fat, typically butter or animal fat, which helps give body to soups and stews. A roux can be white, blond, brown, or dark brown. The longer it cooks, the deeper the color and the more aroma it develops.

“I like a dark roux,” Renaud confesses. For his rendition, Ford recommends at least half an hour of a slow burn. As a bonus, cooking roux fills the kitchen with a smoky aroma akin to toasted crusts of bread. Some cooks aim for a roux resembling the tint of dark chocolate, but high reward comes with equally high risk, as it could burn in mere seconds, negating nearly an hour of supervision and stirring.

Renaud is pleasantly surprised to find Ford’s gumbo bursting with okra, noting that some iterations shy away from the gooey pods. But Ford believes that the vegetable, also known as lady fingers, is sine qua non and the reason the dish got its name.

“That’s the real way to thicken gumbo,” Ford says. “In fact, the word gumbo means okra.” Gumbo evolved from ki ngombo — okra in several West African languages. The ingredient and the stew traveled along the trans-Atlantic slave route and became prevalent wherever there were large numbers of enslaved Africans.

The most famous iteration today comes from Louisiana, displaying influences of French colonization (roux) as well as Native American cooking. Sassafras leaves, dried and ground into a powder, were used by the Choctaw as a thickener. Sometimes called filé powder, it is a key ingredient in gumbo. “Some people think it’s one or the other: okra or filé,” Ford explains. “I use both, but I lean dominant on the okra.”

Like so much of Creole cooking, gumbo recipes vary wildly. Yet they tend to share one quality: Gumbo feeds a crowd. As Renaud remembers it, “Gumbo in the South is something that grandmothers would make for the whole, entire family. And the family would put in money for each ingredient. These types of meals mean a lot because they’re fellowship meals, so it just makes me feel warm.”

Modern-day gumbos can get pretty elaborate, incorporating lavish items such as blue crabs, scallops, and even lobster. But its roots were never that extravagant. The journey through plantation fields and into home kitchens meant simple, honest ingredients. And that’s part of the reason Renaud keeps returning to this repast of his childhood.

“If you are ever in a place in your life where things are too busy or your head gets too big,” Renaud says, “having a meal like this reminds you of who you were … and also who you still are.”

Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 2½ hours. Yield: 1 pot.

For serving:

Listen and subscribe to new episodes of The Flaky Biscuit at iHeart, Apple, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Gerald Tan is an ice cream-obsessed Washington, D.C.-based food writer, TV host, and author ofTok Tok Mee: A Portrait of Penang Street Food. Follow him on Instagram @boulangerry.

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