Prep Time: 10 Minutes
Cook Time: 30 Minutes
Gumbo is a hearty, warming stew-and-rice dish that’s synonymous with Louisiana. Seafood, chicken and red meats may feature heavily in many versions, but turning this New Orleans favourite into a vegan dish gives you all of those great flavours, with the added bonus of a shorter cooking time and more vitamins and minerals thanks to all those healthy veggies. This dish is also a very low fat take on gumbo, especially compared to many roux-based versions.
This quick, easy and healthy recipe will make a nice big plateful for two people.
Ingredients
½ an onion
2 sticks of celery
1 bell pepper
1 sweet potato
10 okra
Finger chillies (to taste)
1 clove of garlic
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 cup of vegetable stock
1 tablespoon of oil
Rice to serve
- Begin by prepping all of your veggies. Peel and cut the sweet potato into cubes; cut the okra, celery and bell pepper into bite size pieces. Peel and slice the onion and the garlic, and cut and de-seed the chillies.
- Make one cup of stock and open your tin of tomatoes.
- Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the celery, onion, chillies, garlic and bell pepper. Fry for five minutes or until softened.
- Add the vegetable stock, chopped tomatoes and okra. Bring to the boil.
- Add the sweet potato chunks and leave to simmer on a low heat for twenty minutes, or until the sweet potato is cooked through.
- While the gumbo is cooking, fill a saucepan with water and boil your rice.
- Once the rice is cooked, drain it in a sieve. Boil the kettle and pour hot water over the rice, to stop the grains from sticking together.
- To serve, spoon a generous portion of gumbo onto the rice and you’re ready to go!
The great thing about gumbo is its versatility. When you’re ready for a change, simply throw some new ingredients into the mix: dried tomatoes, courgette, hot sauce, collard greens, and even kidney beans all work well with this recipe.
*Image courtesy Flickr creative commons.
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A very interesting combination of ingredients to prepare this dish. I think I will pass on the sweet potatoes and use the Tahitian potatoes we have here on the islands. I am not a big fan of sweet potatoes.
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Thanks for the comment! Let me know how it works out if you make this with Tahitian potatoes! It's a pretty versatile dish, as long as you keep the okra to thicken the liquids.
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The sounds so yummy, I love gumbo, but gave up meat about 7 years ago. The last time I was in New Orleans I sure did miss out eating the gumbo. Cannot wait to try this. Thank you so much for the recipe.
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I never tried gumbo before I gave up eating meat, so please let me know how it compares to the meat version! :)
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