Alexandra Kennon
Experimenting with two popular side dishes for Louisiana gumbo: sweet potatoes, and potato salad.
“I got you a box of sweet potatoes,” my dad texts me one day in November.
Immediately, I relay the good news to my husband, “Daddy got us sweet potatoes!” Exclamation point emojis follow.
It’s gumbo season in Avoyelles Parish, and for us, that means making room in the pantry to store cardboard boxes of freshly-harvested sweet potatoes. Come gumbo time, they’re washed, baked, and slathered in butter.
Gumbo is a Louisiana thing, to be sure. But the associated fixings served alongside it can be even more hyper-regional. Potato salad—made with variations of mashed potatoes, eggs, green onions, and mayo-mustard mixtures—tends to reign supreme in the southern and southwestern part of the state, where the influence of German Coast settlers can still be tasted today. It wasn’t until I lived in New Orleans for a period of time that I began to appreciate a cool scoop of potato salad in a hot bowl of gumbo. I was a kid the first time I encountered it, at my cousins’ house in Arnaudville for Christmas. The dish was wasted on me, a child too busy asking my Dad to strain the onions out of my gumbo to try something altogether new. Instead, I went for the familiar side-dish of sweet potatoes. An ode to home, baked to sweet fluffy perfection by my Avoyelles-born aunt. In the central and northern parts of Louisiana, the sweet potato maintains a leg up.
Sweet potatoes have long been an integral part of Louisiana foodways, used in cooking by indigenous groups and enslaved Africans. With varietal names like Beauregard and Evangeline, the sweet potato is all but a distant relative on our extended family trees. In the early 1900s, St. Landry Parish became the first commercial sweet potato district in Louisiana and by the 1940s was known as the “Sweet Potato Capital of the World.” The sweet potato was designated the official state vegetable of Louisiana in 2003 and featured as a side dish on the official menu of North Louisiana created by Chef Hardette Harris in 2015.
As the sweet potato industry grew across the country in the early 20th century, researcher Julian C. Miller developed a sweet potato breeding program at Louisiana State University. His work produced several new varieties including a smooth and sweet potato that traveled well. Although technically a sweet potato, this new product was marketed as “The Louisiana Yam,” in an effort to differentiate from varieties grown elsewhere. These developments brought exponential growth to the sweet potato industry in Louisiana. Parishes such as Avoyelles, where sweet potatoes have been cultivated for generations, adapted to fulfill the increasing demands of consumers.“When the industry began to grow, Avoyelles was well-positioned to benefit,” explains LSU Ag Center Sweet Potato Specialist, Cole Gregorie. With a conducive climate, favorable soil and central location, the parish grew to have several commercial sweet potato farms.
“Growing up, I always worked with my Dad and grandfather on their crop and in 2008, I planted my first crop for myself,” said Cory Juneau, a third-generation sweet potato farmer in Avoyelles, whose family owns and operates Earl Roy Enterprises. Up until last year, Juneau and his father farmed sweet potatoes independently and would then sell their harvest to the family business to be packed and sold commercially. A full-time position with the LSU Ag Center, coupled with increased costs and labor shortages, made it difficult for Juneau and his father to maintain their farm, but Earl Roy Enterprises still farms and ships sweet potatoes commercially.
There are commercial sweet potato farmers around the parish, including in Bunkie and Moncla, but according to Juneau, the hub of sweet potato farming in Avoyelles lies in an area between Mansura and Hessmer known as “The Large” (pronounced läzh.) The prairie soil there produces, what some consider, a sweeter potato, and has people as far as Oklahoma and Arkansas pining for the crop. “Come September, the first big cold front comes in, you better be ready to sell some dirty sweet potatoes,” laughed Juneau.
For Juneau, there’s no gumbo without sweet potatoes. “Up until about five years ago, I’d never heard of potato salad with gumbo,” he laughed.
It’s safe to say that gumbo talk can get a little heated. As the Louisiana Folklorist Maida Owens explains, “If eating and cooking gumbo are favorite pastimes in Louisiana, arguing about what is a good gumbo comes in a close third.” The same is true for what sits next to, or inside of, our gumbo bowls. Hoping to learn more about my friends’ and family’s gumbo rituals, I recently decided to stir one of the deepest pots on the scene: Facebook. Turns out “What do you eat with your gumbo?” is kind of a loaded question, and I got a plateful of passionate (and delicious) answers.
As suspected, friends from the central and northern part of the state mostly grew up on sweet potatoes, with a few mentioning potato salad, and friends from the southern and southwestern part of the state leaned toward team potato salad. Some of them had never heard of sweet potatoes served with gumbo. “I thought you were joking about the sweet potatoes. Mind blown,” said a friend from Slidell. And for many, like myself, potato salad is a fairly recent introduction in the gumbo side rotation.
Besides the popular potatoes, a slate of other intriguing side traditions arose. For those who go for a splash of acid to balance the richness of gumbo, there’s pickles or vinegar. “I must have my Dad’s pickled peppers,” said a friend from high school. I’m reminded of my uncle who always travels with a mason jar of vinegary chow-chow to family gatherings, spooning the relish-like vegetable compound into his gumbo.
Bread and butter pickles are also a favorite of many, adding a sweet and crunchy break from the rich roux. Back in the day, many people would crack eggs into gumbo to add protein. Not so much of a necessity today, but a pleasant surprise when fishing for chicken and sausage. “I love a poached egg in my gumbo juice,” a friend of mine commented with heart emojis. Some folks sprinkle in saltines and oyster crackers to soak up the juice. After all, gumbo is technically soup. And of course, there’s the traditional topping of filé.
Foodways and cultural practices shift as we find partners, move to new places and acquire new friends. I have several childhood friends who now often opt for potato salad instead of sweet potatoes, all in the name of love. “You’ve changed,” is what I would tell them, if I didn’t also occasionally step out on my sweet, sweet potatoes. We all agree that we like to switch it up from time to time, depending on how we’re feeling, how much time we have, and what kind of gumbo we’re making. But if asked to conjure up my earliest memories of gumbo for supper, there’s always the sweet smell of a freshly baked sweet potato intermingling with the roux. Picking the sticky candied syrup off of the pan brings me back into the kitchens that raised me. As a friend of mine proclaimed, “The sweet potato has given me far too much to turn my back on her now.”
