Talk:Étouffée

Untitled
just wanted to say that etoufee and gumbo are virtually nothing alike. gumbo is a thick soup or stew, whereas etoufee has a consistency similar to Indian curry dishes. while both are made with the trinity and a roux and served with rice, so is just about every traditional Cajun dish. the seasoning, consistency, and typical ingredients are vastly different, as mentioned in the article. to explain etoufee by comparing it to gumbo is like basing a whole article about Chicken Tikka Masala around it's similarities or differences to chicken noodle soup. i'm not going to edit now because it would involve a complete rewrite, but i just wanted to throw that out there in case someone more ambitious who knows enough about Louisiana cuisine wanted to do that.

Agreed, this entry needs a lot of updating. There are two promonent types of food in Louisiana: Cajun (developed by the Cajun-French who settled most of southern Louisiana) and Creole (developed by a mix of French and Spanish influences in the immediate New Orleans area.)  Most non-Louisianaians incorrectly associate Cajun food with New Orleans.

The primary difference is Creole uses a lot of tomatoes and Cajun uses almost none. Etouffee is a Cajun sauce made with roux, the trinity, and meat (typically crawfish) and served over rice (and no tomatoes). It should not be compaired to Gumbo.

The current entry more closely describes Seafood Creole which is a Creole dish (duh) and is very similar to etouffee, but with tomatoes.

If etoufee only includes "creatures that run, swim, crawl, or fly," then what is excluded? Just snakes? 66.161.132.66 (talk) 14:37, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Snakes crawl (slithering is close enough to crawling). I'm pretty sure that's an example of Cajun humor and a way of saying it includes any sort of meat/poultry/fish you want to add. --Redwulf25 ci (talk) 05:07, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Étouffée
The eytmology of étoufée in the article is suspect. In French, there are two ways of saying "to braise": étuver OR cuire à l'étoufée. Since the recipes for Cajun etoufee are braised (the difference between that and stewing being pretty fine), it seems pretty clear that that was the original meaning, however much the cooking methods may vary. The French étuver presumably comes from a late or vulgar Latin word, extūfāre, which means to heat with steam or to steam. I hope any editor who wants to deal with this and larger problems in the article will keep this in mind.Josephlestrange (talk) 17:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)lestrange


 * I just want to add that the meaning of "etouffee" in the south is widely known to mean "smothered." There's plenty of history behind it - so, for anyone that edits this after, it certainly does not mean braised nor is that a method of cooking etouffee. (Concerned) 2011 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.152.68.102 (talk) 20:49, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Also to remember, you have cajun thrown in their, which is a funny language and colloquailized. It kind of reminds me of the Tex-Mex spoken in border towns, that combines english with common spanish terms in the same sentence Msjayhawk (talk) 17:54, 8 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I have been eating Louisiana cooking well over 50 years. I enjoy both Cajun and Creole but Coonass cooking (I am certified to use the term) is my very favorite food. When I was growing up (extreme southeast) if someone would have added tomatoes into a traditional Cajun meal I could not have imagined what would have happened. A major problem with either culture is commercialization and restaurant dishes. Traditional etouffee (we don't need all those marks over the top) is a Cajun dish and there are no tomatoes in Cajun home cooking. The article and lead correctly states typically served over rice not as the pictures (typical for restaurant "pretty dishes") show. Not one person I have ever met nor any of the authentic Cajun restaurants I have eaten at plop a scoop of rice on top. We put the rice in a bowl and smother it with food. If any cooks read this please note that a big turn-off to Cajuns is to over-cook the seafood, especially shrimp. It seems a lot of restaurants think shrimp should be rubbery and chewy as opposed to tender, juicy, and succulent. One can always tell when an outsider is involved by things like the pictures and the use of words like crayfish. Otr500 (talk) 23:15, 29 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The accents are part of the standard spelling. As the article notes in the first line, omitting them is common.  Feel free to propose better pictures - be aware that Uploading images requires some rather strict adherence to copyright, which makes it essentially impossible to grab a likely image and use it.  But I agree - *I* would never serve my Étouffée other than over the rice.   Rwessel (talk) 06:53, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Look good or taste great

 * I have been having a lot of fun for a few days asking people if they would prefer food that is aesthetically pleasing or that is so savory they just want to pause with it in their mouth a second to enjoy the umami. Every single time I get responses like "what the hell is umami?", and explaining it does not help. It has been hilarious to try to explain that some say it is a one of the five basic tastes. Every time I heard things like, "where", or "in which world", or "you have got to be kidding me". When I say it means "savory taste" in Japanese they say things like "we aren't in Japan" and "that is just how things taste not one of our basic senses". I am thinking the word will not catch on in the south outside of possibly scholastic or scientific uses. Some of you should try it and enjoy a good laugh. Otr500 (talk) 23:59, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Why can't we have both? Presentation *is* important.  Rwessel (talk) 06:55, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

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