We all know gumbo as a dish associated with Louisiana cooking, and since that state is on the coast it usually has seafood in it. In more recent years, though, some creative chefs have tried to come up with vegetarian versions that are still tasty and honor gumbo’s roots as a medley of French, African, and Native American tastes.
In that vein, we decided to make our own veggie-friendly version at home – and because gumbo is dairy-free, what we came up with is vegan. Here’s what we used:
- A red bell pepper
- A green bell pepper
- An onion
- 2 hot peppers
- Celery
- Carrots
- Half of a butternut squash
- Frozen peas
- Rice
- 3 Massel 7’s Chicken-Style Bouillon Cubes
We first finely chopped the onion, a few carrots, and a few stalks of celery and put them in our Dutch oven with a little bit of olive oil. We cooked these vegetables for a few minutes, until they started to turn translucent.
Then we cut the butternut squash into bite-sized pieces and added them to the pot too. We mixed in a lot of black pepper and cooked everything for another 10 minutes.
Then we chopped up all our peppers and put them in the pot along with about half of a bag of frozen peas.
Immediately we put a cup of uncooked rice on top of all the veggies …
… and then added 3 cups of boiling water mixed with 3 Massel 7’s chicken-style bouillon cubes.
With the cover on our Dutch oven, we turned the heat down to low and simmered our gumbo for 20-25 minutes, until the rice was fully cooked and most (but not all) of the liquid was absorbed.
And then the gumbo was ready to eat!
Our gumbo is a great way to get in a lot of veggies, and using chicken-flavored stock, hot peppers, and a lot of black pepper gives it some of that good Creole flavor. With the rice, this also becomes a really filling vegan meal. You have to chop a lot of vegetables, but otherwise this gumbo is pretty easy to make, so we recommend it for a tasty, healthy, and quick vegetarian meal.