Cajun And Creole Cooking Tips

Cajun Cuisine Vs Creole Cuisine

When you start looking into the cuisine of the Deep South, you will hear the terms Cajun and Creole used often. When the terms are used on food labels, it is difficult to distinguish what constitutes one or the other.

Instead of looking at ingredients, let's try to understand the differences by exploring the origin of each cuisine.
Cajun cuisine can be traced back to French exiles to the deep south from Acadia, Canada. These exiles were poor, which led to the need to survive on anything that was available. Local ingredients, and the harvesting of those ingredients, was a rough and tumble endeavor.

Preparing foods had to be a simple, rustic event because these poor exiled families had very few possessions. Cajun families would work farms, living in make-shift cabins provided by the landowner who shared the crop, but expected the Cajun family to do the work in exchange for room and board.

The Cajun meal consisted of whatever the farm would provide, but usually followed a three dish theme - one protein and two sides. This style is a familiar sight on southern tables today. The main dish, the protein, would usually be a stewed chicken or other meat, with a pot of greens or vegetable and a pot of grain of some sort for the third dish.

Popular Cajun dishes such as boudin, a sausage made with rice and pork, and jambalaya, a one pot meal made up of rice and a combination of meats, are examples of foods created out of necessity, which is what distinguishes Cajun food.

Another classic example of Cajun ingenuity when it comes to surviving on what's on hand is the very popular crawfish boil. This traditional meal was created out of the unlikely desire to boil 'mudbugs' live with a few vegetables and a lot of spices. The now cooked mudbugs are dumped onto a big table and eaten by peeling off the shells, devouring the tail, then sucking the flavor out of the heads. Very unlikely, indeed. But, very Cajun.

Creole food is less born of necessity as it is born of a blending of cultures - French and Spanish. The French influence is seen in the soups and sauces familiar in Creole cooking. The Spanish influence is found in the spices and ingredients brought from the Caribbean, as these  explorers traveled and traded often along the Gulf of Mexico into the ports of Louisiana. More exotic fruits and vegetables are often found in Creole recipes, and methods such as baking in banana leaves would be likely. 

These households were quite often wealthier, including prominent New Orleans families. The wealthier Creole families would typically employ cooks, many with long histories of serving on plantations throughout the south. Therefore, you can find an influx of the African cooking styles along with the development of Spanish and Native American recipes that came along with the plantation cooks.

One dish that simply cannot be put in one category or the other is gumbo. Many cultures have been a part in the development of this one pot meal. The word itself, gumbo, is said to originate from an African word for okra. The French soup 'bouillabaisse' is also said to have contributed to the development of gumbo, ensuring the popularity of gumbo with Creole families. Other influences we recognize today include the Native American's addition of 'file' which is ground sassafras leaves, and Cajuns who added more vegetables and sausages to the pot, both ingredients that would be readily available to them.

Because the deep south has such a diversion of cultures, it is really impossible to draw a definitive line between what is Cajun and what is Creole. But, then, when you stop to enjoy the food, it really doesn't matter much at all. Just enjoy!