Southerners love a bit of everything when it comes to their food—spicy, smoky, sweet, layered. “Our cuisine is not just food, but it’s history you can taste,” chef Ross Dover tells me at Palmetto’s on the Bayou in Slidell, Louisiana, as we sit over a meal that’s a veritable cultural mosaic with French, Spanish, African, Caribbean, and Indigenous influences. Trade routes, migration, and climate influenced the cuisine, as did the so-called “holy trinity” of onion, celery and bell pepper. “Along with that, we love our seafood, and Cajun and Creole spices,” he adds.
And so, when it’s time to leave, I decide to eschew magnets and postcards, and return home with varied tastes enough to fill my pantry and recreate some of the classics of Cajun cooking in my kitchen.
Cajun and Creole spice blends
Southern American food is typically smoky, peppery, and savoury. Spice blends from local brands like Baton Rouge-based Red Stick Spice Company bottle this. These hearty seasonings, be it Cajun blackened spice, gumbo mix, or jambalaya blend, can transform the flavour profile of food. “You don’t need a recipe. Just trust the spice,” says Elijah Theriot, the attendant in the supermarket spice aisle as he helps me narrow down my choices.
Back in India, these blends easily slip into everyday cooking. Rub on fish before pan-searing, dust onto paneer or fries, or sprinkle over marinated chicken for that extra hit of country-style cooking.
Red beans
A visit to the LSU Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge, which showcases life and culture in the state during the 18th and 19th centuries, revealed an unspoken local rule: Mondays were for red beans simmered on the stove. Eaten with rice, this dish was “traditionally cooked while laundry was done, requiring little attention but plenty of time”, the guide says.
Camellia, known for creamy texture and consistency, is the most popular brand. With the addition of chopped sausage and spices, they are the bedrock of a traditional, satisfying meal.
The beans work extremely well in Indian kitchens, especially if treated as a cousin to rajma, slow-cooked, spiced, and served over rice.
Andouille sausage
A cornerstone of Cajun cooking, Andouille sausage is loved for the smoky depth it adds to gumbo and jambalaya. Its origins trace back to France, but the local version is coarse, heavily seasoned, and smoked twice. “The andouille we use is typically made from the upper shoulder of a pig, then seasoned with spices before being smoked twice,” Theriot says.
Legacy makers such as Jacob's World Famous Andouille and Poche’s Market are known for the best sausage, with the perfect balance of garlic, pepper, and smoke.
In Indian kitchens, the sausage can be sliced into a fried rice, tossed into a stir-fry, or added to an omelette.
Beignet mix
In New Orleans, mornings begin with powdered sugar. The iconic Cafe Du Monde serves beignets, pillowy squares of fried dough buried under heaps of powdered sugar, in threes.
The beignet mix, which lets you recreate the sweet treats at home, is extremely popular, even with locals. Just add water, fry, and dust generously with sugar. At Coffee Call in Baton Rouge, the cashier tells me the mix tastes as good as the beignets I just downed. “It’s close,” she says, “but you’ll have to imagine the ambience.”
They make an ideal Sunday breakfast, served with coffee and a drizzle of chocolate or mango mousse.
Cane syrup
Before refined sugar took over, there was cane syrup: dark, rich, and caramelised. Steen's has been making it since 1910, when founder Charley Steen salvaged a frozen sugarcane crop by boiling it down into syrup — and created a southern American staple.
The syrup, smoky and molasses-like, is less cloying than honey. Locals drizzle it over hot biscuits, pancakes, and waffles, add into pralines and pecan pies, or use in marinades and barbecue sauces.
I find the caramelisation lends it a complexity, one that makes it the perfect pairing for pancakes and/or ice cream, and glazes for roast meats.
Community Coffee
Everyone likes their java strong, dark, and often blended with chicory, which adds a woody, slightly smoky bitterness. The brew locals swear by is Community Coffee, founded in 1919 by “Cap” Saurage.
“He was a small businessman and needed a lot of support when he started the family-owned business. The community rallied around him,” says Matt Saurage, fourth-generation owner and operator. Cap eventually named his company Community Coffee in honour of the people who helped build it.
The chicory blend tastes intense and nutty. Back home, it pairs well with milk, a bridge between filter kaapi and a robust espresso.
Tabasco sauce
I encounter it everywhere, on tables, in kitchens, even stirred into cocktails. Tabasco is less condiment, more a constant in this part of the world. First made in 1868 on Avery Island by Edmund McIlhenny, the sauce still follows the same recipe: peppers, salt, vinegar, and time.
At the factory, where it’s possible to explore the seed-to-bottle process, the mash is aged in white oak barrels for up to three years. That leads to the flavour: sharp and vinegary, with a slow-building heat.
A few drops can lift a dal, sharpen a tomato rasam Bloody Mary-style, or add unexpected spice to fried eggs.
Teja Lele writes on travel and lifestyle.